(We welcome NCS reader Mike Yost with his first guest post for our site, prompted by his experience at the recent Denver stop of the Opeth–Mastodon tour. This post also appears as of today on Mike’s own blog, which you can find here.)
Mastodon finishes shredding the frenzied crowd. The drummer tosses his sticks into the throng. The lights go up.
It’s between sets, so I sit with my back against a metal barrier that separates me from the larger crowd below. I shove in a pair of earbuds, turning up “Black Rose Immortal.” A twenty-minute Opeth piece of metal magnificence and mayhem that chokes out the white noise of conversations around me.
There’s something about heavy metal that’s primal. Cathartic. A juxtaposition of raw, exposed animosity eviscerated and dismembered by beauty herself, left on the dusty ground in a pool of blood to die—with a smile.
The lights drop, and I jump to my feet. I yank out the earbuds. The crowd stirs. The only illumination comes from the Fillmore Theater chandeliers hanging from the ceiling—glowing purple. Movement on the stage. The crowd starts yelling in anticipation. I join in. Blue lights grow bright to illuminate that signature O. Mikael Akerfeldt walks onto the stage. Metal ensues.
Opeth starts with their progressive rock from Heritage, Akerfeldt singing God is Dead!—the chorus from “The Devil’s Orchard.” Between songs, Akerfeldt comments that he loves Denver because the thin air makes him feel drunk without having a single beer. Someone from the crowd yells, play some fucking metal! “Patience,” Akerfeldt replies. “Or I’ll play the song ‘Patience.’”
Soon we are all rewarded for our patience, and the intro to “Demon of the Fall” begins. Angry growling death metal ensues.
Slamming my head forward with everyone else, punching the air above me with the traditional devil horns, I realize there’s another important characteristic to metal—solidarity.
Metal is about getting lost in the futile anger, disappointment, and frustration of life, drowning out your problems for three hours. Finding absolution, and knowing it’s only temporary. Then slamming your head even harder, growling with everyone around you to each line of the song as your throat blisters and you start to gargle on your own blood.
Young or old. Bald or hair hanging below your ass. Straight or gay. During a metal concert, these trite distinctions just don’t matter.
Outside of a concert, when people find out I’m gay, they usually respond with, “you don’t act like it.”
Which is true: I don’t watch musicals. I loathe the music of Lady Gaga. I was dragged into a Banana Republic once. I wanted to light the entire building on fire.
I do own about a hundred band t-shirts—from Dead Can Dance to Agalloch to Velvet Acid Christ to Opeth. I drive a Dodge Ram (the lesbo-mobile, it’s been fondly called). I’m not offended (nor do I care) when someone around me uses the word gay to describe something stupid. And I fucking love metal.
Most of the music I hear in gay bars and on the radio lacks depth. Feels synthesized and forced. The songs have shitty lyrics. In a word—kitsch.
Nietzsche wrote that art made for the masses is valueless. Conversely, he added, music made for the sake of making music “at every moment make[s] life worth living at all, and prompt[s] the desire to live in order to experience the next moment.”
The concert ends with “The Grand Conjuration.” Opeth takes a few bows before leaving the stage. My shirt is plastered to my back with sweat. A woman I’ve never met before smiles, “that was fucking awesome!” Adrenaline still saturating my veins, I can barely stand still as I wait in line to buy (yet another) t-shirt. A guy in his fifties with a big, gray bushy beard and a tie-dye t-shirt stands next to me. Words like concert, kick-ass, epic. intense, and fucking are being thrown around—though not in that order.
And this moment is about sharing the experience of being pummeled by head-stomping riffs, double bass fills, and Akerfeldt’s demon-like growls. It’s about no one giving a shit I’m gay.
The sidewalk carries me away. Denver’s Fillmore Theater is swallowed up behind me. The traffic on Colfax Avenue saturates my senses.
I stick the earbuds back in. Take my time as I walk back to my truck, finishing “Black Rose Immortal.” Those pesky problems I forgot about are still lurking at the periphery, waiting patiently to rise blindingly with the sun.
But the rest of the night belongs to the fans. This moment belongs to metal.
25 Responses to “THINGS MOST GAY MEN DON’T LIKE: METAL”
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I disagree with the tagline of this article. People ARE buying power metal albums, shirts, etc.
That’s a pretty well written piece. Keep him, Mr. Islander.
Believe me, I’m trying. 🙂
It caught my heart. Christians and other people labelled homophobic should actually take an example from metalheads (I’m a Christian and a metalhead myself fyi). And I agree, Islander keep him!
Also a Christian metalhead here, and I also really enjoyed this article. You could substitute just about anything you want for “gay” here (well, except maybe “Christian,” since a lot of metalheads do hate that). I immediately like the author of this article because he identifies first as a human being and a metalhead, when there are so many who want us to think that being gay is the most defining characteristic of a gay person.
While I probably wouldn’t agree with many of your views on the topic of homosexuality, you’re awesome in my book. If that counts for anything.
I have an explicitly Christian metal band in the pipeline for a Synn Report coming up… just depends on how best to order the various bands in terms of what order I cover them.
Of course it counts! Thanks, man!
And that’s one of the great things about metal: Christian or Atheist, we’ll bang our heads to the same song.
Thanks for the comment. I’m happy to say I have some great friends who are Christians. They’ve always accepted me for me. Trying to get them to listen to metal, however, has proven futile. 🙂
Great piece!
This is too awesome. \m/
awesome pieve, very well written!! And yeah Islander keep him!!!!
What a strange dichotomy; plugging in earphones and lurking in the shadows to separate from the crowd between sets, yet diving into the maelstrom of bodies and finding solidarity. Those trite distinctions I find in conversations are some of the funnest parts of concerts for me. Otherwise, id just stay home and tun my stereo full blast. Nonetheless, a lucid point of view.
Things most people don’t like… Heritage.
No?
I like it. I still miss the old Opeth, but I like it.
Anything’s better than continuing to do the same thing and going downhill. From what he’s stated on the topic, it sounds like that would have happened.
My complaint is that he simply chose another hill to go down. The new direction isn’t an improvement or continuation of quality.
So I suppose he was stuck between a (prog) rock and a hard place.
If I could hate your any harder for that pun your computer would catch fire.
I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of my deafening awesomeness.
Perhaps one’s own hate could add to that fire.
One still wonders what “acting gay” is supposed to be. One has encountered a couple of homosexual guys in life, but one has never observed anything about them, or have something about them pointed out to one, which is supposed to be stereotypically gay.
Glad to have you here, Mike. NCS is attracting even published authors now! Islander, how many NCS shirts did you send this guy to get him to contribute?
Nary a one. That probably would have been counterproductive. 🙂
Thanks Metal Guy…and Throllcock Fetish is one of my favorite bands!
Gay myself, this article pretty much encapsulates my thoughts on the whole GAY and METAL thing.
haha , iam gay, i have boyfriend and i love the FUCKING METAL!!! so trust me the most of the gay peoples are normal… but someone is more different..
of course the gay metalhead talks about opeth