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#metalgate calls us to action

by Cory Van der Pol on December 18, 2014

Image by Gunnar von Cowtown.

By now, the rage over #metalgate has subsided as #shirtgate, #gamergate and #metalgate converge on a single movement that spans many genres: opposition to the censor police who, using political correctness as an excuse, have invaded multiple genres with mediocre options while declaring them enlightened. They have used this indirect invasion to take over media and public discussion, crowding out the better music and games for more propaganda.

The point made in these pages is that the invasion of terrible hybrid-metal bands — simply boring, pointless, pretentious and of no relevance to a normal life — into metal has come about as a result of the SJW journalist invasion that #metalgate spoke of. SJWs, hipsters and scenesters are basically the same thing. They find a new genre, exclaim how unenlightened it is, and then bring into it the same stuff they do everywhere else, making that genre as boring as their origins. These people are lost, without purpose, and desperate for any attempt to draw attention to themselves. When they take over, they all promote each other and talk about each others’ bands, websites and labels until they cloud the skies of that genre and most information about it involves the hipster agenda.

What I suggest today is <slight> action. That means that we do the simplest and least amount of work for the greatest effect. We know who the SJWs are and where they are writing articles. It’s time we exclude these people from the metal scene. That does not mean attack them, but to simply use other news sources, listen to other bands, and avoid their self-promoting circular masturbatory motion. Here’s a short list of sites that have supported SJWs:

These are the invaders who are trying to destroy metal music and turn it into indie/hardcore so it can be “safe.” If you support these with your band, your own reading, or your advertising, you are helping to turn metal into the latest version of hipster indie rock with the “safe” opinions that metal has always rebelled against.

How we shut them out is the same method used to keep Christians and neo-Nazis out of metal: say “that’s a political site/band/label” and imply that you won’t deal with them because of the resulting shady and manipulative associations. Pretend you found out that the Vatican, North Korea, Scientology, Monsanto, al-Qaeda, the Ku Klux Klan or Jesse Jackson were running a website and how you would react to that, and then apply it here.

15 Comments

Tags: gamergate, hipsters, metalgate, scenesters, shirtgate, sjws

Rock music hates metal and wants to assimilate it

by Brett Stevens on December 17, 2014

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has again slighted heavy metal by including musicians from all genres except metal while some of metal’s longest-running, widest-selling and most-acclaimed acts go unnoticed. As one metal writer pointed out:

“This is a symptom of the disrespect across the board toward hard rock and heavy metal,” says Trunk. “The Grammys haven’t gotten any better since they gave Jethro Tull a Grammy instead of Metallica (for the first ever Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Performance trophy in 1989).”

Exhibit A of that lack of respect: late, great Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman was a glaring omission from this year’s “In Memoriam” segment at the Grammy Awards.

Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, rock was the bad boy of popular music.

Then in the late 1960s the hippies took that to a new place where rock was not the bad boy so much as the voice of protest.

Punk stole the bad boy crown again by ducking out of the hippie world and becoming antagonists of everything people wanted to believe.

Metal did the same thing but in a different way. Where punk said our society was rotted and dying, metal pointed out that our souls were rotted and dying because we were in denial of life itself.

Ever since then, other groups have been trying to reclaim the bad boy title, with hip-hop the most plausible candidate. The only problem is that all of them follow the late 1960s model, so their bad-boy-ness is tempered.

Rock ‘n Roll has not forgiven metal and punk for stepping out in a different direction. They are still those who strayed from the pack, and ideally would be assimilated (rock music with a metal or punk surface) or destroyed.

Don’t hold your breath, metalheads, that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will recognize metal. To them, we are the enemy and we are either conquered and made into rock, or must be excluded from their special bad boy club.

12 Comments

Tags: Heavy Metal, rock and roll hall of fame

#metalgate helps put Hatred back on Steam

by Cory Van der Pol on December 17, 2014

You probably don’t yet know this, but it’s ideological warfare out there. “Politics” no longer exists in the realm of voting and reading the Editorial page only. It is now part of every aspect of life, and the movement is only accelerating. This occurs because the people in our society are divided by what type of future society they want to be moving toward creating.

Some say this is accelerated by the collapse of the USA as a superpower and with it, the notion that the “American formula” of capitalism, the welfare state, democracy, consumerism and media power is no longer seen as a universal good. Instead it may be about to join the other failed ideologies — Communism, Nazism, Anarchism, and undoubtedly others — in the dustbin of history. Being on the cusp of such vast change naturally makes most people nervous, and so the masses are forming into mobs and squaring off against one another.

One of the big stories on your talking screen right now is The Interview. Apparently Hollywood — which never colludes with popular opinion in looking for bad guys who will not offend certain traditionally offended groups, like American Indians, the Chinese, and Arab Muslims — made a movie about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Il Jung. A group of hackers claiming to be from the DPRK have hacked into Sony studios, revealing in the process that upper leadership is almost entirely white and male, but are also threatening theaters that show this film. Many theaters have out of fear pulled it from their marquees. This is how you get things done in the age of ideological bullying: shut your opponents down, and call them fascists, all while enforcing some “fascism” of your own on their point of view.

Reaction to #metalgate has been mixed. SJWs first tried to deny it, then blamed the gaming community, and finally have fallen back on their try-hard die-hard standard of calling #metalgate supporters “fascists.” But today, #metalgate scored its first victory. The video game Hatred — developed in Poland by a group of metalheads — instigated controversy early on and, thanks to whining by SJWs who called it a “genocide simulator,” was removed from video game clearinghouse (like a cross between Google’s App Store and Amazon) Steam. But today, Hatred is back on Steam thanks to a grass-roots campaign by #gamergate and #metalgate supporters. You can see how this political warfare operates: the goal is to get the sellers to stop carrying certain games and music, which reminds me of the bad old days of the 1980s when Tipper Gore and her crazy friends tried to get heavy metal albums out of stores and barring that, required they have little stickers put on them saying that they had bad lyrics and Satan.

Over at MetalBlast, an article calls out this ideological warfare for the utter hypocrisy that it is:

In the world of Social Justice Warriors, when a white person “twerks” it’s cultural appropriation (because within their infantilizing view of blacks, Africans have a proud tradition of shaking their asses until they clap), while a female African American playing heavy metal is just a good “you go girl!” moment. This is, incredibly, both hilarious and infuriating at the same time, since while nobody has ever said that Derrick Green should leave Sepultura because he’s black, commentators, and even performers, demand whites leave jazz, rap and hip hop alone. Thankfully, those defenseless minorities can count with the Social Justice Warriors carrying the White Man’s Burden.

It would be ironic if “anti-racism” became another form of racism, one that rewards minorities for behaving in the way that their white overlords — er, social justice friends — want them to. But then again, it might not be out of character. After all, Eric Gardner was restrained by NYPD for the crime of selling single cigarettes. New York also made 24-ounce sodas illegal. Once upon a time, they made alcohol illegal, too. The motivation behind the “social justice warriors” of every age is the same: they have found a cause to which you cannot object without appearing to endorse its converse. There is no response to “Are you an anti-Nazi?” or “Are you a witch?” except an enthusiastic Yes! because otherwise you seem to be saying that you think Nazis and witches are just great, fine, peachy-keen. This condition is almost impossible to parody, as the Tyranny of Tradition folks explored with an article that made its points indirectly:

All I want is to not be told what to do by outsiders because they got their feelings hurt a few times growing up. People want me to speak in a way that is politically correct, but what about how I feel? What about who I am? Why do I have to be the one that pretends?

When our world is seen in a literal binary of “good” versus “evil,” we are the ones caught in the middle. We can become pawns for one side or the other, but insanity will win because politics has invaded normal life. The SJWs trying to take over metal have lost their legitimacy because metalheads have called them out on it, and the more they deny, obfuscate and outright lie, the more it becomes clear that we caught the real “fascists” with their hands in the cookie jar. They have lost legitimacy not just for their attempt to control us, but for their frankly boring and pointless imitation of all those old post-hardcore albums in metalized form. Metal deserves better, and seeing these pretentious gits kicked to the curb does us all a world of good.

5 Comments

Tags: gamergate, hatred, metalgate, politics, sjws

Exhumed to release Gore Metal: A Necrospective 1998-2015

by Brett Stevens on December 16, 2014

Exhumed released its debut of Carcass-influenced bouncy death metal, Gore Metal in 1998 with a bounty of crepitant grindcore riffs and death metal surging power. Almost two decades later, Exhumed returned to the studio to re-record its first album as Gore Metal: A Necrospective 1998 – 2015, which will see release this February via Relapse Records.

Thanks to increased musical proficiency through years of recording and better technology, Exhumed promises a bigger-sounding and more intense version of the debut. Vocalist/guitarist Matt Harvey said, “I’m super pumped that we got the chance to re-record Gore Metal. I don’t think any of us were happy with how it turned out the first time around, so getting another shot at it meant a lot to me personally. I was also really excited to have our old friend Ross Sewage reprise his vocals on the new version, ensuring that it still sounds like that era of Exhumed, though things are a lot more audible this time around!”

As a precursor to the release Exhumed will tour North America after their current European tour alongside Aborted, Origin and Miasmal. With co-headliners Napalm Death and Voivod, Exhumed will launch their tour on January 27th in Miami and continue to a final show on February 28th in Houston. Additional support will be provided by Iron Reagan and Black Crown Initiate with Ringworm, Dayglo Abortions, Theories and Phobia to appear on select performances during the tour.

Gore Metal: A Necrospective 1998 – 2015 Track Listing:

1. Necromaniac
2. Open The Abscess
3. Postmortem Procedures
4. Limb From Limb
5. Enucleation
6. Casket Crusher
7. Death Mask
8. In My Human Slaughter House
9. Sepulchral Slaughter
10. Vagitarian II
11. Blazing Corpse
12. Deadest Of The Dead

Exhumed 2015 North American tour

EXHUMED w/ Aborted, Origin, Miasmal:
12/15/2014 Grillen – Colmar, FR
12/16/2014 Steinbruch Theater – Darmstadt, DE
12/17/2014 Jubez – Karlsruhe, DE
12/18/2014 Rock It – Aalen, DE
12/19/2014 Heavy Xmas – Zürich, CH
12/20/2014 Turock – Essen, DE

EXHUMED:
1/24/2015 The Rock – Tucson, AZ
1/25/2015 Red 7 – Austin, TX
w/ Napalm Death, Voivod, Iron Reagan, Black Crown Initiate:
1/27/2015 Grand Central – Miami, FL w/ Ringworm
1/28/2015 State Theater – St. Petersburg, FL w/ Ringworm
1/29/2015 The Masquerade – Atlanta, GA w/ Ringworm
1/30/2015 Ziggy’s – Winston-Salem, NC w/ Ringworm
1/31/2015 Soundstage – Baltimore, MD w/ Ringworm
2/02/2015 Gramercy Theater – New York, NY w/ Ringworm
2/03/2015 Union Transfer – Philadelphia, PA w/ Ringworm
2/04/2015 Opera House – Toronto, ON
2/05/2015 Maverick’s – Ottawa, ON
2/06/2015 Club Soda – Montreal, QC
2/07/2015 Palladium – Worcester, MA w/ Ringworm
2/08/2015 The Chance – Poughkeepsie, NY w/ Ringworm
2/09/2015 Agora Ballroom – Cleveland, OH w/ Ringworm
2/10/2015 Reggie’s – Chicago, IL w/ Ringworm
2/11/2015 Amsterdam – Minneapolis, MN w/ Ringworm
2/12/2015 The Zoo – Winnipeg, MB
2/13/2015 The Exchange – Regina, SK
2/14/2015 Republik – Calgary, AB
2/15/2015 Starlite Room – Edmonton, AB
2/17/2015 Rickshaw Theater – Vancouver, BC w/ Dayglo Abortions
2/18/2015 Studio Seven – Seattle, WA w/ Theories
2/19/2015 Hawthorne Theater – Portland, OR
2/20/2015 Metro – Oakland, CA w/ Phobia
2/21/2015 Strummers – Fresno, CA w/ Phobia
2/22/2015 House of Blues – Los Angeles, CA
2/23/2015 Club Red – Tempe, AZ w/ Phobia
2/24/2015 Sunshine Theater – Albuquerque, NM w/ Phobia
2/25/2015 Summit Music Hall – Denver, CO w/ Phobia
2/26/2015 Granada Theater – Lawrence, KS w/ Phobia
2/27/2015 Gas Monkey – Dallas, TX w/ Phobia
2/28/2015 Fitzgerald’s – Houston, TX w/ Phobia

Lineup on Gore Metal: A Necrospective 1998 – 2015:

Rob “Bodybag” Babcock – bass, backing vocals
Mike Beams – guitar, backing vocals
Bud Burke – lead guitar, backing vocals
Mike Hamilton – drums
Matt Harvey – guitar, lead vocals
Ross Sewage – lead vocals
Backup vocal “Slay Team”: Alejandro Corredor, Dr. Philthy

“…a gleeful celebration of death metal…” – Decibel

“EXHUMED is Carcass reincarnated.” – Terrorizer

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Tags: exhumed, gore metal, relapse

Why metal is better than “social justice”

by Cory Van der Pol on December 15, 2014

As #metalgate rages on on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Tumblr, the people who are trying to force these views on metal are defending themselves by claiming that #metalgate doesn’t exist or is insignificant. The truth is that this agenda has been advancing for some time and it has a dirty secret.

The dirty secret of the “SJW” agenda in metal is that it is totally unnecessary. Despite my own sympathies with many of the ideas they hope to achieve, like better treatment of human beings, I suspect most of these people are just poseurs. They are adopting certain viewpoints that they think are necessary to get ahead socially. Nothing makes a person feel more powerful than to be able to call someone else ignorant and selfish, while (in their own minds) looking superior, intelligent and altruistic. Especially if you are coming from behind and feeling ashamed about your family origins or stature in life, it can make you feel like a god to have moral right on your side and to look much more advanced than those around you. This is just another shade of the broken social life in the modern world coming home to visit metal and use metal for its own ends.

But even more, these “helpful” demands from SJWs are totally unnecessary. This is metal, where if you can create the music, you can join in the fun. We have always had something better than feminism with women being present and respected in Nuclear Death, Mythic and Bolt Thrower. People of color have always been here in Thin Lizzy, Suffocation, Blasphemy and Mystifier. Metal bands come from all over the world and from every tribe, culture and religion imaginable. We tend not to mark a little box each time someone who is non-heterosexual, non-white and/or non-male joins our ranks, but they are there and always have been. In metal, there is no need for a crusade for equality because we already have it. Even better, we have done so without turning that into a crusade against those who are heterosexual, white and/or male. We just accept people as they are.

When #metalgate upsets people it is because they do not want to face the conflict between outsiders and metal, as is shown in this article on MetalSucks:

But my ultimate problem with #metalgate is that it’s entirely manufactured. No one, or no group, is banding together to try and change metal in any one specific way — the threat is entirely imagined. Certain social values enter the metalsphere simply because those values are spreading throughout society as a whole — this idea that “SJWs” failed with #gamergate so they’re now moving on to a different cause is total bologna. They’re entirely separate people!

Personally, I enjoy what Vince Neilstein writes but don’t read it that often, mainly because I don’t visit sites with ironic names that censor out the word “fuck” for reasons unknown. But while I think he’s normally on point, here he confuses a few things. First “those values are spreading throughout society as a whole” means society outside of metal is adopting these values, and now wants metal to bow down and conform. He’s basically taking a pro-#metalgate point of view there but I’m not sure he intended two. Second, he assumes that the people involved in resisting the SJW incursion are #gamergate people, when actually it’s people like myself in metal who are not from either side of the political spectrum. We hate politics in our music, metal has already addressed this issue, and we don’t want to follow the herd in whatever flavor-of-the-month the iconoclastic hipsters behind the SJW fad think is important.

Metal has never been about doing what everyone else is doing but it has also never been about being “ironic” and trying to be different so hard that we act randomly. Metal is its own law and has its own culture. From outside of that culture, as Neilstein writes, people are trying to push conformist social values on us. The best “activism” for all of us who love metal is to push back against that dominant paradigm and go our own way instead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQBo2Drpx9I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKhFJXYRFYs

6 Comments

Tags: gamergate, hipsters, metalgate, MetalSucks, sjws, vince neilstein

#metalgate: SJW-metal is the new “Christian metal”

by Cory Van der Pol on December 15, 2014

#MetalGate exposes human behavior at its most basic level. When someone stands up and refuses to go along with the herd, most people fear that person. S/he is refusing to endorse the same behavior that everyone else engages in, which makes them look like they may be wrong. Even worse, this person has found a way of life which may even be better. This freaks them out and so they attack.

If you went to an American high school, you are familiar with the two types of iconoclasts. The first do everything they can to make sure that you know they are an iconoclast: they wear hats, dress oddly, listen to “edgy” music and give the finger to authority — usually some 64.5 year old security guard — whenever they can. The other type are quietly iconoclastic by cutting out of their lives all the time-wasting stuff other people do so that they can focus on what they want to do. In this group, you find many of the artists, top students, athletes, musicians and other honestly interesting people. The first group tries to be this, but never can be.

Heavy metal has always been the interesting kid. It does not need to shout its iconoclasm from the rooftops because when you throw the music on your stereo (or cell phone mp3 player) you can immediately sense that something different is going on here. It does not sound like regular rock music, the 31 flavors and 50 shades of which normal people listen to. This is music that has gone beyond what others are willing to tolerate, and it echoes this idea in its lyrics and imagery. People fear death, disease, warfare, the occult, conflict and evil, so metal sings about these things. It reveals to us everything that we would rather deny, including — especially — the apocalyptic and dystopian factors that point out that our society is over-ripe and likely heading for a fall and decay. Heavy metal is like the person at a cocktail party who will not take the hint and keeps asking about your upcoming corruption trial even though it is rude, unsociable and impolite to do so.

When a true (but quiet) iconoclast stands up, all the fake iconoclasts immediately want to take that person down. S/he makes them look bad in comparison because they are clearly people acting like iconoclasts, not actual iconoclasts. As many people have noticed through the years, there is no bigger group of sheep than those who insist they are not like the other sheep. An actual iconoclast does not need to tell you that he’s different; he just does what he does, and that difference becomes clear. There is also one more thing he possesses, on top of difference, which is direction. He is not different to be different. He’s different because he has a plan, an agenda and a purpose, where everyone else is just dressing up in weird clothes to try desperately to be “cool” (itself an ultra-sheep concept).

Over the years, many groups have tried to take over metal. In the 1980s the Church felt threatened by heavy metal and so sponsored a form of contemporary worship music known as “Christian metal” which imitated heavy metal bands, but had Christian lyrics. It never felt right as metal and so never caught on with anyone but those who were already Christian. Christian metal peaked in the mainstream with Stryper, whose Amy Grant style take on Motley Crue made fodder for endless jokes but also a fair number of album sales before the band vanished into well-deserved obscurity. The feeling among Christians was that since heavy metal was evil, Christians needed to make a “safe” version of that evil music so they could enjoy it too. The media ate it up, too, because it was ironic just like the high school iconoclasts. Christian metal was the equivalent of wearing a fedora and suit vest over jeans and a Hawaiian shirt while talking about the blue energy fields.

The problem with this agenda shared between the Christian establishment and the media establishment had two heads: the music wasn’t very good, and these two groups were obvious outsiders. They tried to solve this by getting Christian bands to play alongside regular metal bands, but this did not end well as most metalheads recognized this intrusion for what it was. No matter how many times the Christian bands said “See, we’re one of you!” and the big newspapers referred to them as heavy metal bands who coincidentally just happened to be Christian, metalheads did not buy it. Christian metal fizzled after some time. Other groups tried to achieve entry in the same way, including far-right groups, vegans and anti-drug crusaders, but all slipped by the wayside from failure to be accepted. The simple reason for this is that allowing metal to be assimilated to become a voice for someone else’s agenda violates the basic idea of metal itself:

If I could distill metal into a single phrase, it would be this: metal is the musical equivalent of the word “FUCK” aimed at society.

This is why the SJW’s will never win. Their “victory,” if such a thing is possible, would be Pyrrhic. It would destroy metal. It would turn metal into pop rock, and metal is the violent musical reaction against pop rock.

With #MetalGate, what happened was that in the late 1990s a ground of ex-hardcore people decided they wanted to make metal “safe” by having it bleat out their doctrine. Their viewpoint was popular among the new group of hipsters and other iconoclasts who filled American cities. This group created a new type of metal, a hybrid between death metal and post-hardcore and sometimes indie rock, and declared themselves the new underground. To be part of this new underground, you had to have the “right” opinions. The old underground nearly universally rejected them on musical grounds, since the new hybrid metal was both random and highly resembled old, burnt-out 1980s genres. But that did not stop these people from recruiting a new group of fans and trying to edge out the older underground types. They also had media support; most of them worked in media or knew people who did. New labels, magazines, and web sites popped up to sign these new bands who brought in a new audience not of metalheads but ex-hardcore kids. Like people fleeing a big polluted city only to move to a smaller city and make it big and polluted, they jumped ship looking for something unruined to ruin.

In other words, this is Christian metal all over again. They want to make metal “safe” by insisting that we talk about life in the way they have defined it, which is a series of “issues” much like Christian metal wanted to talk about morality when metal wanted to write about war. They have media support and want to use that to drown out other voices so that only they have control. Personally, I doubt they even believe the stream of stuff they write lyrics about, but like the fake iconoclasts from high school, just want to sound “educated” so they can be superior to the rest of us unwashed, uneducated, and simple-minded metalheads. Christian metal took the same attitude which was that we were simply ignorant sinners who needed to “receive” the good news of the Bible. Like Christian metal, “SJW metal” is failing and that is why certain media personalities are trying so hard to make us accept it. #MetalGate is the first pushback against the Stryper of the 21st century, and it’s making them so mad they are scrambling all hands to put out denials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn4QsRmm6Y0

5 Comments

Tags: christian metal, metalcore, metalgate, sjw metal, sjws

The SJW strategy for #metalgate: denial

by Cory Van der Pol on December 14, 2014

The phenomenon of #MetalGate expands as social justice warriors (SJWs) find themselves on the defensive, so they have retaliated with their favorite accusation: “There’s no issue here!” They want you to believe that #MetalGate was drummed up in response to “just two lines” in a SPIN article.

In their spin (no pun intended) metalheads and #GamerGate veterans formulated this whole situation out of pure hype, despite these being only a few of the articles written to try to shepherd metal into bowing down, becoming sociable, adopting the dominant paradigm of its age, and in other words becoming like everything else in media and music in its endorsement of an agenda favored by some people but not most metal fans: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. These are just a sampling of the many articles written about metal and how it is either bad and terrible because it is not PC, or how now that it has become focused on “social issues” — generally something only grindcore bands do — that it is OK for normal, soft, fluffy and well-intentioned people to like it, but only the good bands with the right opinions. You know, the opinions like those of the 1960s bands that metal rebelled against in the first place!

Now let’s look at those “just two lines” again:

Metal is still dogged by the issues that arise from its deep-seated conservative values, but thanks to an increase in conversations about racism, politics, and feminism, those on the right side of history have gained solid ground.

Two-line statements have launched wars, ended careers and brought down economies. The question is the content of those lines, and in those words the writer tells us that metal is conservative, conservative is bad, and thus metal is bad, and that metal is on “the wrong side of history” if it does not start immediately making its focus creating propaganda (and let’s be fair: preachy lyrics are propaganda) about “racism, politics, and feminism.” This assumes that metal has not addressed these issues in the past and found another way of addressing the underlying issues. When the writer at SPIN says that metal needs to adopt these issues, she means that metal needs to preach the dogma she agrees with and abandon its own take on these issues. For political fanatics, framing of the issues is everything, and they frame those issues so that their conclusions are the only ones you can reach.

What we have here, as in #GamerGate, is a small group of people who — being inclined toward media and pop music — have infiltrated the metal scene and are trying to use it to preach their own propaganda. Metal already has its own way of addressing all these issues. We do not need to be bullied into agreeing with this small group of SJWs who contribute nothing but commentary and support only the “new” metal bands which are most emphatically not the classics of the genre, nor in the views of many of us anywhere near the quality of the classics. But these bands have the “right” opinions, you see, and for these fanatics, that is all that matters. Their latest attempts to minimize #MetalGate are just an attempt to distract and deflect from that reality, but they have picked the wrong group to attack, because metalheads specialize in unpleasant realities that socially pretentious people would like to avoid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oZCZicsuHc

20 Comments

Tags: hipsters, metalgate, modern metal, propaganda

Calling #metalgate what it is

by Brett Stevens on December 13, 2014

We all went to high school. #MetalGate reminds me of those dark days when there were cool kids and un-cool kids, and if you weren’t in the former group you were just nobody.

Growing up with a single Mom who kept our budget tight, I never had the cool clothes. Since I worked after school and then did homework until bedtime, I didn’t know the cool stuff on TV or in movies. Not having been raised around the cool kids, or having a parent with the time or energy to show me how to be “cool,” it never occurred to me to try. And suddenly people were pointing and laughing and then my head was getting bashed into a locker.

When one of these people approached me and started making fun of me, my instinct was to cower away and assume that they knew something I should know which gave them some kind of “authority” in the high school social scene. Over time I realized that this “something” was nothing important, and their real goal was savor the Schadenfreude of making someone else miserable for being who they were. I learned that there is one way to stand up to such people: do not apologize, do not back down, but go straight to the biggest one and hit him as hard as you can. They usually backed down and often apologized after that. I let the matter drop at that point since most of these bullies came from troubled homes: Dad drank too much, Mom ran around with the neighborhood used-car salesman, or there were money troubles. Some of them ended up being lifelong friends, after we settled our differences on the schoolyard.

When I look at #MetalGate, I see a whole industry cowering before these people who want to make metal “socially conscious” and politically correct. We, as metalheads, have refused to call these people what they are, so I will: bullies. They are bullies whose weapon is guilt. In high school, it was guilt for not being “cool.” In the hipster-nerd infested metal scene, it’s guilt for not having the “right” opinions. Haven’t we all matured past this?

Bullies always have a clique. This clique agrees that they are right and everyone else is just not cool enough. They need an excuse that other people will accept for their bullying, so they come up with a reason that sounds good. They do not care if it is true. They just want to rally other people around them who will agree that you deserved getting your head pounded into that locker. Like all cliques, their little group works by every member validating every other. It is the worst aspect of humanity which we saw at the Salem witch trials, at Nuremburg, even in lynch mobs hanging African-Americans. This is the psychology of prejudice, and bullies struggle to conceal their prejudice by arguing that they are defending their ingroup against an outgroup:

What Tajfel discovered is that groups formed on the basis of almost any distinction are prone to ingroup bias. Within minutes of being divided into groups, people tend to see their own group as superior to other groups, and they will frequently seek to maintain an advantage over other groups. – The Psychology of Prejudice, Professor Scott Plous, Wesleyan University

In other words, if you group people together by any arbitrary means they will quickly act like a tribe and enforce their rules on others. This is how bullies operate: they gather together people, offer them entry into an ingroup, but the price for that entry is that they must join in the bullying of the outgroup… and so kids get heads slammed into their lockers for wearing cardigan sweaters (hey, it was a hand-me-down) which is totally uncool.

The #MetalGate people, who I am told call themselves “Social Justice Warriors” or SJWs, are bullies of this type. They will claim they are against prejudice, but really what this means is that they are using that argument to conceal their own prejudice. They just want someone to bully. The reason is probably the same as with the high school bullies, which is that their lives are miserable and they want to take out their frustration and anger on others. This pattern occurs time and again, with the most famous being the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC):

On August 19, 1985, the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee of the United States Senate opened public hearings intended to gather expert testimony on “the content of certain sound recordings and suggestions that recording packages be labeled to provide a warning to prospective purchasers of sexually explicit or other potentially offensive content.” Widely known as “The PMRC Hearings” after the acronym of an independent group—the Parents Music Resource Council—advocating for the “voluntary” adoption of warning stickers on record albums whose lyrics it deemed to be offensive, the hearings did not, in fact, end up leading to any kind of legislative action.

This group also wanted to bully metal because they were looking for a scapegoat for what they saw as a decline in public morality. They figured they could pick on metalheads because we are not the wives of Senators, we may not have education and money, and we are prone to be silent when society bullies us. But metalheads stood up against them, whopped them in the nose, and refused to take it. Another group of bullies back in the 1980s were the Dead Kennedys fans who decided that Slayer was really, really bad for singing (with clear disapproval) about Auschwitz and the horrors of the Holocaust. “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” was their theme song and they used this as an excuse to beat on random fans wearing Slayer tshirts. Punk had just gone through its own #PunkGate at that point, I guess, and the politically correct people came out on top.

There are plenty of groups of bullies in metal today. The pretentious hipsters who think you are unenlightened if you do not “appreciate” Deafheaven are one, and so are the people who think that if you are not a full-on SJW you are a bad person. So are the “tryhards” who insist they support diehard underground music but use that as an excuse to troll anyone who does not exclusively listen to three-chord Blasphemy or Incantation clones. In each group, the solution is the same: tell them where they can shove their pretense and guilt because you know their secret, which is that they are just bullies.

The difference with SJWs is that they act like they are revolutionaries who are re-educating us in important topics. But guess what, guys: you are not disenfranchised anymore. You get positive press and in fact most of you work in the press. The US government agrees with you, as does the UN. Your ideas are not revolutionary because they are the norm. Like most bullies, you are cloaking yourselves in the ideals of the mainstream in order to punish us outliers. This is no different than what happened in the Soviet Union or Nazi regime, where people who “thought differently” got shot at dawn. You are the new Nazis.

Metal should fight back because metal should not become a vehicle for the control agenda of any group. Metal is its own group, and people police this because we know that many other groups would like to assimilate us and use us for their own purposes. It has been tried before, with hard rock in the 1970s, punk in the 1980s, and now post-punk in the 2000s. Like all bullies, they want to stop us from being different and make us more like them, which is to say the bog-standard generic mainstream. Their bands are all second-rate and their ideas warmed over slogans from the 1960s. Metalheads should feel no guilt about acting in our own self-interest, which is to keep our music away from this group of bullies and refuse to let them dominate us.

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Tags: gamergate, Hardcore Punk, Heavy Metal, metalgate, post-hardcore, punk

#MetalGate

by Cory Van der Pol on December 12, 2014

I had hoped that the busload of squalling drama that was #GamerGate (see here: pro | con) would not come to metal, but #metalgate has arrived courtesy of the same people who intruded into the gaming industry despite a striking lack of actual contributions:

Metal is still dogged by the issues that arise from its deep-seated conservative values, but thanks to an increase in conversations about racism, politics, and feminism, those on the right side of history have gained solid ground. – SPIN

Before we get involved in this partisan squabble, consider that metal is beyond the left-right divide. The left wants individualism through equality, and the right wants individualism through lack of social obligation. Neither recognize that societies, like metal genres, are organic entities where more is required than individualism; we need cooperation.

It is easy to see however why someone might want to — as writers have in the past — call heavy metal conservative. Metal avoids “social issues” and other internal questions of a society and instead looks at the health of a society as a whole, or in other words, how sane it is. We see a world gone insane through a refusal to pay attention to reality. The methods of that are beyond an artistic genre and should be injected into it, but since 2006 at least trying to reform metal has been a pet project of certain groups:

More than three decades after Black Sabbath conjured images of the dark arts, heavy metal is growing up. The genre is increasingly incorporating social and political messages into its dense power chords.

Cattle Decapitation vocalist Travis Ryan said his San Diego band’s mix of charging guitars and an animal rights message is drawing a diverse crowd that includes activists as well as traditional metal fans. – The Washington Post

The grim fact is that metal has split into two groups. When the newer group encountered the older group, they were appalled that it did not share their opinions, not just on politics but how to live. This new group is inherently “social” and they share opinions which make their friends feel warm and fuzzy about them. That is at odds with the older metal tradition of not caring what society thought, telling the hard truth, and being obligated to no one because most people are crazy.

It is only when you get involved in a managerial role with society, like a kindergarten teacher insisting that we all play nice together, that you care at all about making sure that everyone is included. Metal does not. Metal looks at society from the view of history and whether it is healthy or diseased from within. The metalhead view is consistently anti-managerial, since metalheads recognize the deficiencies of people and want to keep most of them at a great distance. It is not that we want to manage them, like political people do, but that we want to be free of them.

For years people have tried to make metal more sociable. They first tried in the mid-1970s when they mixed Black Sabbath with Led Zeppelin and produced hard rock, hoping that they could sell it to more people. “Sociable” sells. Then they tried in the 1980s with rap/rock, funk metal and other abominations. Finally they hit on nu-metal but that turned into an extended conversation about the impact of child molestation. And then, during the early 2000s, they rolled out a metal/hardcore fusion that had sociable lyrics like hardcore punk has for many years.

Notice that none of this was brought on by metalheads. It was created by people who wanted to be metalheads, but felt they could not be metalheads unless the genre agreed with their existing social, political and lifestyle biases. At this point, the metal community has entirely split between those who like the old school and those who want to be “nu-skool.” This is because they are two separate genres. Metal is metal, and the indie-metal/metalcore wave is someone else trying to use us for their agenda. #MetalGate is just the latest salvo in this fight.

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Tags: gamergate, indie metal, metalcore, metalgate, politics, sjws

Sepultura and Les Tambours du Bronx – Metal Veins: Alive at Rock in Rio

by Cory Van der Pol on December 12, 2014

Had Sepultura taken this direction instead of the path they chose on Chaos A.D., they would have receded into rock history as legends and not warmed-over attempts at former glory that got swallowed by their attempts to popularize a form of music that is inherently against all things dictated by popularity and illusion in the heart of the individual.

As every write-up on this band will tell you, Les Tambours du Bronx are a sort of Blue Man Group from New York whose shtick is to have a dozen men banging on samizdat percussion instruments, most visually impressive when made from 55-gallon drums and malleted with baseball bats. Like Crash Worship, on whose fame they surely predicate their own but with an intent for a more public spectacle, Les Tambours du Bronx put on a show that is as much visual as audial. They team up with Sepultura, playing its crowd favorites from Chaos A.D. onward into the post-Max years. The result shows a great deal of promise that with a nudge it might live up to.

To make this a great release, they would have dropped the vocals and given Andreas Kisser more time lacing his lead guitar through the riffs like a jazz player covering an old standard in a new interpretation. They might have allowed Sepultura to do what they do best, which is to write a string of ear-snagging riffs in a riff salad that nonetheless makes sense, and let the rhythm of Les Tambours du Bronx carry the songs entirely. This would have given the music an intense ritual air with primal undertones that belong to no tradition and fuse the modern with the energy of antiquity. Instead, as usual, there are too many chefs stirring the pot, or as it might be said for metal music, too many influences warring for dominance. Random industrial noises and squeals, the ranting pseudo-death vocals of Derrick Green and other attempts to impose rock-style song structure onto this open jam limit its power.

Since leaving speed/death metal behind, Sepultura have sought a way to become a Ramones for heavy metal, playing simple riffs that unite a carnival crowd and bring people to a point of energetic focus. Similarly, the style of percussion on this album creates a massive feeling of unison especially as it internally deviates from the archetypal rhythms it sets up for the audience to follow. Together these make for a spectacle, but the musical intensity is not here mainly owing to the lack of focus on the Sepultura side. Instead of trying to use outside forces to accent their own music, they should adapt their music to complement those forces and through mutuality, achieve something new. Metal Veins: Alive at Rock in Rio as a live album makes for dubious listening owing to the muddy sound, but with this being basically a “we’re different” stunt using nu-Sepultura in unchanged form, it offers little for repeat listens.

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Tags: les tambours du bronx, modern metal, sepultura

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