SJW is “selling out” for the 2010s

hells_headbash

On the heels of the recent kerfuffle involving Deiphago and SJWs hyping an incident into a politically-driven media event, Hells Headbangers Records has released a statement about the incident. It reads, in part:

In regards to the Deiphago incident, rest assured that Hells Headbangers, the Agora and everyone else involved in bringing you this event are very upset and disappointed. There is NO excuse to justify Sidapa’s action – he fucked up hard. An incident report was filed and the victim declined to press charges. Although the new Deiphago LP is due to arrive soon, this incident will undoubtedly have a negative impact on its’ sale and the bands reputation has permanently been scarred. Such a shame! Further ramifications will be dealt with internally.

Although the label was just trying to do what it thought was the right thing, this statement reveals the core of SJW: it is driven by commerce and designed to signal safety. Just like big corporations spend millions to show that their cars, vacuum cleaners and toxic foods are safe, metal bands, labels and media are trying to expand their reach beyond the “scary” realm of the underground by making it “safe.” This was the same thing that selling out did in the 1980s, which was to take all those dangerous violent heavy metal bands and channel them into glam metal, which was offensive but not dangerous. There was nothing there that would sidetrack your child from going to school, getting good grades and going on to a career. Sure, he might have a bit more sex, and the bands took tons of drugs, but there were no ideas there that fundamentally challenged the bourgeois view of the world.

In the 1990s, death metal and black metal were far from safe as well. They rejected the dominant ideology of their time, committed actual crimes and more importantly, embraced political and philosophical viewpoints that are incompatible with democratic society and bourgeois existence. Forget the petit rebels of hip-hop and heavy metal, black metal bands actually scared people, and by doing so they upped the ante for what a band had to do to actually rebel. In many ways all heavy music has been stagnant since that time because no one can figure out how to be more extreme, and so they sigh and content themselves with being merely outrageous. “Selling out” meant that process where a band stops trying to have authenticity in its music and outlook on the world, and instead settles for whatever brings in a consistent audience.

In our current time, SJW is the method of selling out. If you go SJW, you will offend no one. People feel comfortable around businesses who promise that they are motivated by ideology, not profit. This also seems to guarantee that everyone will be accepted. Of course it does none of those things, being like all public relations exercises a series of cheap promises whose compliance can never be verified, but people like to be told comforting things. It calms them down and then they feel complacently optimistic when shopping at that store. This is why companies — again with shades of SJW — will fire controversial employees, hire private security, put up spikes to drive away the homeless and put up happy signs talking about diversity and how the uranium they use to flavor their food is 100% organic. Safety sells, or rather, lack of safety precludes sales.

Just like glam metal in the 1980s was preferred to hardcore punk, thrash and early death metal by parents who were afraid it was unsafe for their precious snowflakes to hear, and might lead them to a life lived in a van down by the river, precious snowflakes now want to be safe in their music. They want to be rebels… well, no they don’t. They want to appear to be rebels and at the same time, incur as little actual risk as possible. That way they can talk it up at the water cooler at work about how wild they are, and still not have to pay the price for wildness, like endangering their easy transition into the middle classes. It is not surprising that as metal has sold out in the 2010s with SJW, quality has plummeted. Who can make good music about such insincere topics?

goatcraft_censorship

Luckily a backlash has commenced. Using the tag line “Make Metal Great Again,” a small group of metal musicians have declared their intent to drive out SJWs by indirect methods, namely by demanding higher quality metal. Sell-out metal is poseur metal, which means that it is both fake and replaces real metal. Metal thrives when it replaces the fake with the real. That could in fact be metal’s mission statement. Poseur metal is fake because it is designed to signal “safety” instead of opening the can of worms of truth, realism, history, violence, disease, horror and existential doubt. Labels love poseur metal because it has high margins: cheap, without risk, and easy to clone, it returns on investment every time even if less than an out of the ballpark hit like a really great band can be. Magazines love poseur metal because they can re-type the same story every month. Web sites love it because no review is ever wrong when all the music is the same under the skin.

If you wonder why metalgate has hit such a nerve, it is that it has threatened the profit model of the entire industry. Metal ca. 2015 depends on a constant flow of mediocre poseur metal bands to make sure that all the journalists, label people, PR people, bands and studios get paid. The market has shifted from the smaller, more agile environment it was in the middle 1990s. Now metal is big business, and like Microsoft or Apple, it’s in middle age. It aims for conservative successes that do not alter the formula and will not take the risk on anything outside of the norm. Since the music is crap, the labels need some other way to sell it to people, and they came up with “safe rebellion”: it looks all leather and motorcycles, but in fact it is a PC nanny who will tell you that everything is fine so long as you keep buying SJW products and ignoring the obvious signs of impending social collapse.

There’s a lot of pushback out there against those who push against boundaries. This is to be expected, but you can tell who are the cowards in the room by the people who won’t call it what it is. It is resistance by those who are growing fat and lazy off of the easy money chain formed by mediocre metal. It is no wonder they get nasty. This is why David Ingram has a temper tantrum when other people commit the grave sin of failing to agree with him. It’s also why Viranesir, the band banned from BandCamp, found itself on the receiving end of quite a bit of vitriol:

viranesir_-_go_back_to_turkey

In theory, SJWs and the like would be above such behavior. But that is the key to understanding them: their political opinions are advertising, not something they actually believe, just like what businesses say in television commercials are things designed to make you buy the product, not truths. The advertisements lie and SJW is an advertisement. This is why SJWs are so hell-bent on controlling what others see, hear and think. It would be a corporate wet-dream to have mind control, but with SJWs, they have a type of advertising that simply takes over like a virus or plague. Is is to surprising that many SJWs have connections to racist and fascist groups? As authoritarians, they appear to have switched sides, but really what they have done is changed their justification from ideology to commerce, and are now getting paid to advertise for their new corporate masters.

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7 thoughts on “SJW is “selling out” for the 2010s”

  1. Viranesir says:

    And they do it without even realizing… MTV’s mission is accomplished

  2. Concerned Citizen says:

    Hells Headbangers never deliver on time, always make excuses, and don’t respond to emails. This is probably another excuse to somehow fuck over the people who bought that thing. Fuck that label.

    1. canadaspaceman says:

      Really? This is the first time I have ever read HHB were not to be trusted.
      I have ordered from Hells Headbangers for maybe over 7 or 8 years now and do not recall any problems.
      If an item was out of stock, they would refund that portion. They have answered emails when I have questions.
      They seem to want to maintain a positive relationship with customers, unlike other distros.

      1. morbideathscream says:

        Same here, I have nothing, but good things to say about HHR, I got to talk to Chase Horval at the vendor spot hhr had at MDF, cool dude. I wish I was able to attend Hells Headbash, but I only make so much money, so I can only attend so many fests a year. I don’t like how they have given in to the SJW’s on this one though. Perhaps, they’re under pressure as a label and afraid of losing business.

        I rebelled against my Greek orthodox upbringing, the hip-hop culture that was booming at the time and has persisted in the mainstream to this day, mainstream media and culture. I have zero tolerance for braindead idiots who make up most of mainstream society. So growing up I easily identified with metal, the speed, the aggressiveness, the hatred, the power, the extremity, the realism and the evil vibe often associated with metal. Now everyone has got their panties in a wad over some bitch getting hit backstage for stealing Deiphago’s beer? Gimme a break! Please let me know if there is something to the story I may not know about. I’m not here to advocate violence against women, but I would not take too kindly to anyone trying to steal anything from me regardless of gender or race. Surely bitches like Kim Kelly made this incident seem 10x worse than it actually was. To me, being a PC liberal and being into metal is no different than being a Christian and being into metal. Both types of people have tried to censor and destroy metal. Oh and both types are about striking fear and enslaving the masses.

  3. Daniel Maarat says:

    Hells Headbangers just sells Motördeath, Nunslaughter shovel releases, and bootleg t shirts. Who cares what he thinks.

  4. armenia4ever says:

    I’ve been noticing this shit for the last few years. SJWs don’t care about justice and they don’t care about metal – they care about themselves and their inner narcissism.

    They come into every “group” I.E Occupy Wallstreet, Atheism, and even Gaming and they infiltrate, co-opt, and then destroy. Anyone who dissents is labeled “isms” or “ists”

    If you don’t know who “InternetAristocrat” is, he perfectly summed up what a Social Justice Warrior is and he predicted #GamerGate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvYSPxvrq5s

    This bullshit needs stop. We need to stand up to them, and tell them to fuck off. Don’t apologize, don’t give an inch. They don’t care about “marginalized” groups or “oppressed” classes. They just want to use them as a token and human shield to deflect criticism away from them.

    Probably the main band promoting this social justice nonsense in anything close to “metal” is Senses Fail – who I still really like. I’ve noticed articles at metalinjection on how “faggot” is a bad word and about how Attilla is homophobic. WE need to figure out where all this shit is infiltrating from and call them out for the censorship loving fascists they are.

    I’m planning on doing some in-depth research on this for an article concerning social justice and its infilitration into metal and I’d love to get some of your thoughts on the subject.

  5. Jake says:

    I have gas. This is the sole cause of my butthurt.

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