- Joined
- Jul 14, 2015
Alright, here's a good one.
A couple years ago one of my friends was in town with her boyfriend. They traveled all the way up from Texas to see this black metal band called Inquisition. They're from Colombia by way of Seattle, sing about the brutal coldness of space, and their lead singer sounds like Popeye. Good shit. Ali's never up in New York and I had an interview with the frontman of the band, so I was pretty hyped. Then her boyfriend and I had a pretty interesting conversation over drinks before my interview.
"But what the fuck gives you the right to interview Inquisition?" he asked.
"Uh, I emailed a request to his PA agent and he said yes."
"Okay, but do you know the Brazilian label that released their original thrash metal demos in 1996?"
"No. Who the fuck cares?"
"Well, here you are going to interview Inquisition in a fucking Wolves in the Throne Room shirt like some kind of limp-dicked hipster faggot."
This is all typical metal elitist nonsense. I'm better than you because I know useless trivia facts about bands nobody else has heard of. I'm better than you because I hate that one band you like that got writeups in NPR and the New Yorker. It's a really petty pissing contest, and I'm always amazed when I find people outside of internet forums who actually think like this.
"They make good music," I replied back. "What's your problem?"
And then he dropped this bomb.
"I just hate them because they got my band kicked off a bill and banned from a venue out in Oregon because we're NS."
NS is shorthand for National Socialist. As in a fucking Nazi.
There's a disturbingly high population of Nazis in black metal. Well, any non-zero population of Nazis is a disturbingly high population of Nazis as far as I'm concerned, but there's an entire sub-scene of Nazi black metal. Like any musical movement that's a soapbox for a cause instead of being music for music's sake, it sucks.
So like the good little Jew that I am, when he offered to buy drinks, I ordered the most expensive single malt scotch in the venue. And when I bid him goodbye with a "Shalom aleichem" at the end of the night, he made a facial expression that I will cherish for the rest of my life.
A couple years ago one of my friends was in town with her boyfriend. They traveled all the way up from Texas to see this black metal band called Inquisition. They're from Colombia by way of Seattle, sing about the brutal coldness of space, and their lead singer sounds like Popeye. Good shit. Ali's never up in New York and I had an interview with the frontman of the band, so I was pretty hyped. Then her boyfriend and I had a pretty interesting conversation over drinks before my interview.
"But what the fuck gives you the right to interview Inquisition?" he asked.
"Uh, I emailed a request to his PA agent and he said yes."
"Okay, but do you know the Brazilian label that released their original thrash metal demos in 1996?"
"No. Who the fuck cares?"
"Well, here you are going to interview Inquisition in a fucking Wolves in the Throne Room shirt like some kind of limp-dicked hipster faggot."
This is all typical metal elitist nonsense. I'm better than you because I know useless trivia facts about bands nobody else has heard of. I'm better than you because I hate that one band you like that got writeups in NPR and the New Yorker. It's a really petty pissing contest, and I'm always amazed when I find people outside of internet forums who actually think like this.
"They make good music," I replied back. "What's your problem?"
And then he dropped this bomb.
"I just hate them because they got my band kicked off a bill and banned from a venue out in Oregon because we're NS."
NS is shorthand for National Socialist. As in a fucking Nazi.
There's a disturbingly high population of Nazis in black metal. Well, any non-zero population of Nazis is a disturbingly high population of Nazis as far as I'm concerned, but there's an entire sub-scene of Nazi black metal. Like any musical movement that's a soapbox for a cause instead of being music for music's sake, it sucks.
So like the good little Jew that I am, when he offered to buy drinks, I ordered the most expensive single malt scotch in the venue. And when I bid him goodbye with a "Shalom aleichem" at the end of the night, he made a facial expression that I will cherish for the rest of my life.