Hipsters and Metal, Again?

Okay - so it seems like Metal Inquisition has found a hipster (or it may be streetware of some other kind) clothing line that has co-opted a classic death metal band's logo. See the post here for details (and the picture for the visual evidence).

A few things about this post, briefly.

1) I thought it was hilarious (again). But it also combines that whole "hipsters suck" thread with something I'd been thinking earlier: metal isn't supposed to be cool. It's supposed to be a close-knit, kind of brooding space (though some people are very giving if you're in it).

2) I thought the pictures and commentary were golden.

3) I actually really liked the race analysis that they had at the end of the piece (36 Mafia sporting Maiden shirts still has some redeeming and understandable side to it - given all the appropriation that happens the other way around with black culture). I'm telling you - these folks have more smarts to them than they let on.

4) Chuck Billy got cornrows?! WTF?!?!

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Retro-Thrash Makes Me Nostalgic

With the advent and current fad of retro-thrash that I've been reading/hearing about a lot on Invisible Oranges, Aversion Online, and other reputable spaces, I've been curious about the phenomenon, but not had the time or exposure to hear a lot of the new stuff. More than that, the phenomenon has made me think about why thrash has been a favorite of mine in the various (and ever-increasing) genres and subgenres of metal.

What is it about thrash? I'm not going to go down this path for too long, because "retro-thrash" has made me go down memory lane and revisit a period of the music past the 1991 release of Metallica's Black Album - which I used to hold was the turning point for thrash, and the point at which I stepped away from metal for a while.

Anyway, I like thrash because of the aggression in the riffs, the just over the top nature of it (just past pop-accessible/mainstream power metal and hard rock), the way that it's not really unified in any way (where black, power, and death metal seem to have some theme/technique that binds them), the showmanship is focused on guitar leads and some riffage - not so much on the rhythm section (I didn't really even pay attention to what drums and bass were doing), and the vocals are all over the map. The funny thing is, they want you to be able to discern the lyrics... there's perhaps a bit of naiveté that they will change the minds of people listening. But think about the singing - from the highly idiosyncratic vocals in Vio-Lence, to more power metal type stuff with Forbidden, to almost a hardcore approach with the thrash bands that adopted that style. And where else could a singer like Joey Belladonna seem to fit on top of a band like Anthrax?

I like thrash because it is pretty uncomplicated - the complexity of death metal (I've been learning) is hard to dig into (especially for someone whose metal journey started with Maiden). I like the social consciousness of some of the lyrics, though you can only imagine there's a "top ten" list out there somewhere from which the lyricists choose their themes (racism? check, environmental warning? check, war?...). I like singing along with people whose voices aren't so technical/skills-based (usually) as power/heavy metal, and yet actually have the pop-sensibilities of verse-chorus-verse structure. And I'll still hold that a strong/solid Slayer lyric is much more aggressive and "dangerous" when you can blast it and the average Joe in the street knows that Araya is screaming "before you see the light, you must die!!!"

As an outsider embracing a music of outsiders and for outsiders (hipsters weren't around when I was coming up), being "close" enough to understanding for mainstream listeners to more clearly demarcate my difference, actually made a difference. I think death and black metal were just so out there at that time that they weren't considered sufficiently dangerous enough for me to let go of thrash. Really, it was the sing-alongs while barreling down small town roads in my buddy's car.

So I've been revisiting older, but not first generation, thrash lately. I got into the genre after the standard-bearing albums had been out for a while - it was catch up for me until Metallica's Black Album came out. The album's "accessibility" blew them up, screwed them up, yadda yadda yadda. The story is documented in their own, tragically funny Some Kind of Monster (a real treat for the Mustaine fans/haters out there, by the way). I'm not going to waste space on the album here - it was baaaaad - it just wasn't thrash (or, really, very revolutionary or new in any way. If I wanted to hear watered down Soundgarden, I'd just as well have waited for Audioslave). More than just the album itself, what I think it did was sound the death knell for American thrash. Albums by other groups after Metallica did so well tried to emulate the accessibility of their effort, or reacted to it. Many groups broke up soon afterwards, and grunge took off in the mainstream.

I have a personal story connected to (and that prompted) this little walk down thrash memory lane. I was turned off by Metallica but I distinctly remember going out during May of 1992, in the midst of my finals in college, to one of my favorite record stores downtown to pick up the day's new Maiden release: Fear of the Dark. I can't remember if I knew or just found out then that Testament's The Ritual came out at the same time, but I picked that up too.

Fear of the Dark struck me immediately because the cover (which I had on one of those large cardboard boxes they dispensed with soon after) featured the first non-Derek Riggs sleeve I'd seen for Maiden. I was shocked, and not happy. The music impressed me even less. But Maiden had lost their way with the preceding album, in 1990, which felt like a step backwards, a quick release, and a major disappointment after the masterful Seventh Son.... Because I was trying so hard to like Fear, I only gave Testament's The Ritual (blessed with a more interesting cover), a few cursory listens. I seemed to have some positive memory of Souls of Black - the 1990 release which is now my least favorite Testament album, going further to suggest that the decline of the metal I listened to actually pre-dated the Black Album because 1990 was a pretty bad year.

Anyway, because of my Souls of Black memory, I thought The Ritual was just not hard enough. It showed a stronger departure from Testament's trademark thrash sound - the highlights on this disk were Chuck Billy's ability to stretch out his voice and sing a bit more, and Alex Skolnick's lead breaks. Even Peterson's trademark outstanding riffage was not particularly interesting or memorable. This seemed like more of a hard rock/crossover kind of album. Now that I know Chuck Billy's roots as more of a rock singer, I can see where this gave him some space to spread out, and he does just that. It's hard to fault his vocal delivery - he really is one of the best. Listening to the album now, it's actually grown on me a little more, though I can't help but notice how boring the drumming is - something I only noticed after listening to more death metal.

Once I heard The Ritual and found out that Skolnick was leaving, I tuned out for about 10 years. I missed their resurgence with Low, the new direction of Demonic, and the full return to form in The Gathering. I only got a sense of how great they'd become when I listened to the outstanding Live at the Fillmore disk - where I heard Murphy shred, and the wonderful 3-song acoustic set at the American Indian Community House in NYC (if only I'd known!).

That I missed the original releases of the key thrash albums back in the mid eighties is one thing: I was pretty young. But missing new classics as they were released because of the Black Album fallout (and how too many groups thought it was a ticket to get away from struggling on the fringe), really sucks. Metallica killed a lot, and the new resurgence of metal (thrash, particularly, because death, which was just a footnote when I was coming up is the real veteran now) is at a good time, and I'm glad to actually be a part of it as it is going on.

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Kill a Scene: The Hipster Dilemma.

Permit me a bit of a rant. I can't stand hipsters. I feel like they're infecting all the places that I like to go where I think I'll be able to escape the faddism of general pop culture and all the fakeness that comes out of it. But of course, this fungus has spread into so many spaces that it's killing me. I've been asked what I think a hipster is. Well, to me, it's someone who dresses very particularly to look like s/he isn't trying to achieve a particular look, which I guess isn't as rigid of a definition as the requisite uniforms of folks who actually commit to a genre.

And maybe that's the thing: hipsters are ultimately people who are so noncommittal, to anything and everything, that they shift from fad to fad, playing it off as if they are at the "edge" of the cool, while fucking up the vibe for the rest of us in our respective "just around the corner" spots. How do you chill in a spot where people are trying so conspicuously to seem like they're supposed to be there? Especially when the race factor comes into play, though a friend made the observation that the "people of color on stage to hipster ratio is like, 1 to 5." But still, there's this weird dynamic when you have people coming to events because it's alt.pop, and that means that it's either political, "ethnic," or in some other way underground.

These hipsters, the folks with the wardrobes carefully chosen and hair tossed just right to make them look disaffected, nonplussed, and casual, must either be massively networked to come out to shows and events in such brute force nowadays, or it's just that some events are clear magnets for their ilk. Wow. I just found this article, which much more succinctly sums up many of the elements of what I hate about hipsters. They are not counter-culture or post-mainstream. The piece actually makes it out well: they are the new mainstream, especially in urban spots like Brooklyn and San Fran. It's this commodification of "cool," or trying to be cool, that really annoys the shit out of me. I like people who go deep in things. I enjoy conversations with folks who are actually really into something, and have been with it for a while. There's a harmonic vibe I feel from that, and if the person is talking about fly-fishing but seems to love being able to share it, well, that's awesome, and I do my best to keep along.

But what do hipsters talk about? I mean, do they have much depth? And is what I feel true: that they're mainly just a bunch of well-off white kids trying to create a "bohemian" lifestyle without any of the passion, ideals, or at least "I don't give a fuck" attitude of past (and current) groups? I just don't get it. I love hanging out with true bohos. Because they just don't care about what everyone else is doing. It's sort of the East Village of the not-so-distant past, when you just felt more free to express and explore who you were, and you had this loose community of people who were doing the same thing, and finally didn't feel like freaks for liking stuff that was non-mainstream and out there. It wasn't a "Scene"... it was just a bunch of micro-scenes that people went in and out of, but it wasn't as faddy as hipster "culture" (I cringe at giving hipster tendencies any cultural significance). It's just weird. I mean, if you seem to eschew the mainstream, you should be thinking about capitalism and marketing and what elements of "cool" are being marketed to you and what you're just reinforcing with your actions.

But that level of consciousness is completely lacking in the hipsters I've come into contact with. It's epic narcissism, with white kids looking at themselves and thinking that they're creating some kind of new tribe of the cool. I don't see hipsters as being a real community, but I may be wrong. I mean, I think it's ultimately every dude for himself. And "I think I'm cooler than you." It's like high school all over again. But in this weird way where instead of just keeping away from the metal heads and the brown and black kids and saying "look how uncool," the popular clique is coming to our events, getting up in our spaces, and making that their playground as part of their coolness.

Hipsters seem like just another weird outgrowth of white privilege, fucking up the vibe in vibrant subcultures as they go, essentially asserting a right to be there and leave there with no respect for anything. Basically - anyone should feel free to step into a scene, but not just to be seen, know what I mean? And that's what annoys me more than anything. Just freakin' commit already. I guess their apolitical nature also bothers me - there's nothing less counter-culture than just sucking up to the materialism that's around us, and not having anything critical to add to the dialogue. I mean, at least the Marxists sitting in their coffee shops talking about the revolution are still engaging things in some way. Hipsters are just mold on the food that is our culture.

I almost feel like skipping the stuff I'd rather go to, which has become infested with hipsters at every turn, and just going to something so over the top that they wouldn't be caught dead there for fear of being branded uncool. I mean, isn't Genesis touring again? Or is Yanni around? Suddenly the hyper-commercialized becomes so anti-hip that it's hip?

Is that the game we have to play? Fuck it cousin, I'm just unplugging if this is how it's gonna go. I'll cook my own food to stay away from them in the cheap eats around town. I'll start my own band and play in my head for hours, safe from the hordes. I'll visit folks and skip consumer leisure culture all together. And when those mofos catch on that it's the next movement, I'm locking my door behind me.

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Maiden India, Mashups, etc.

Okay - so as serendipity would have it, I have some great tidbits that seem to fit so perfectly into the little world I've created for myself in this blog (including my occasional reflections on South Asian diaspora, metal, critical and cultural theory, and whatever else) that you'd think I made this shit up.

First, I got an email from the Maiden camp about some new merch on their site. I thought "well, I can't get this in the U.S., but I might as well check it out." I didn't realize that Maiden's playing Bangalore next week. Wha?! Yeah. As in, India. And they even made a new shirt design up for it. Eddie blasting a cricket ball. How bloody perfect is that. But for 40 USD shipped, it's a shirt I can only admire on the internet. I cannot wait to hear about how many people went to a Maiden concert in India. There's a following? There are other brown Maiden heads (aside from the obvious freaks like Dave Baksh from Sum 41) out there? Who knew!

And on that tip - in recognition of this wonderful show (wonder if it's their first in India - anyone know?), Wax Audio, who has created some really interesting and cool mashups (read and hear the best of them here) created this mock-up called "Maiden Goes to Bollywood", with a funky, funny mashup to commemorate the concert.

Check it out. It's like all my worlds colliding (I'm not a Bollywood fan, but heck, even I like to get down once in a while). Avoid the Maiden/Public Enemy mash at all costs.

Finally, there's a discussion of "hipster metal" over at Invisible Oranges that I found fascinating. I wouldn't have thought enough to split out two branches to the kinds of metal (Dionysian and polished). I tend to follow the traditional view that most American thrash came out of a quest for a more aggressive NWOBHM sound, while Slayer's take on Venom led to the breadth of more extreme metal that's since followed. Regardless of its roots, IO's contention that hipsters are interested in the more extreme metal because of the discussions that can ensue. Interesting - read his words instead of my attempt to summarize here.

But I like his thoughts on Maiden - they are clearly not the most profound of the groups (though their use of historical figures and moments as fodder for songs is fun for the nerd-thrashers out there), but a Maiden fan is a Maiden fan. Sorta simple.

I'm going to have to come back to this soon with an eye towards the racial dynamics of metal audiences (fans and artists, really), in light of my recent viewing of "Afro Punk", a documentary with a pretty deep take on people who identify as black, and as punk/hardcore fans. I really liked it, but more to come. Meanwhile, check out those mashups!

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