Defenders of The Faith

I was bored last week, watching cable, and I stumbled across the 2006 documentary American Hardcore. Most of you probably haven’t seen it so here’s a short synopsis, it details the history of American Hardcore Punk from 80-86, arguably the bleakest stretch of Reagan’s presidency for many in this country. They had interviews with Henry Rollins, a short talk with Ian MacKaye, just about everyone you would expect. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see an interview with the Bad Brains, which is what would have made the documentary for me. Over the course of things I realized one thing, I hate hardcore, with a passion. In fact I hate 99% of the punk rock I’ve ever heard in my life. I love the people involved in it, loved their politics for the most part, can’t stand the music, not for the life of me. And this is after really, really trying to get into it.

I used to work as a security guard on a third shift and had a lot of free time on my hands, most weekends I’d end up listening to the local college station’s punk and hardcore show out of pure boredom. I had friends who knew the scene inside and out, one friend who even ran a label that put out hardcore 7”s and the like. He could tell you the difference between hardcore in 80 vs. 84 vs. 88 in NYC, Washington DC, where ever. The man had a codification machine for a brain, a million infinitesimal variations between near identical bands never seemed to phase him. Talking to him was much like reading my blog must be for those who don’t much care for dance music. We ended up bonding over a mutual love of Neurosis, proving that if you’re open minded people nearly always can find things in common. But when it comes down right to it, only the fanatics care about the micro-differences between various factions inside a scene proper.

Anyways, I hate punk and love metal. Which is actually a slightly more defensible position than it sounds at first. Back in the stone ages of the early 80s punks hated meathead metal fans, and metalheads hated those faggot punks. It was a kind of tribal warfare which doesn’t make much sense from the modern perspective, considering the two genres having been swapping spit since around roughly what 82 or so? If you can find a copy of Heavy Metal Parking Lot that’ll give you a good idea about the metal fanbase back in those days. It’s basically a short home movie shot in the parking lot of a Judas Priest concert in the late 70s. The film includes a funny scene where a woman they’re interviewing claims that she is going “jump” Rob Halford’s “bones” directly after the show. That always makes me chuckle, seriously who can listen to songs like Eaten Alive and come away with the belief the man is straight? I’ll be at my job and Hell Bent for Leather will come on the radio and for a few moments I’ll feel like I’m on the inside of a colossal joke. I’ve got a lot of admiration for the man.

For me, personally speaking, when I listen to punk all I hear are crude echoes of the glory days of thrash. It’s a methodology thing as well, while Ian Mackaye was screeching about being straight edge, Metallica and Megadeth were writing mini-symphonies about substance abuse. Go listen to the song Straight Edge and then go listen to Master of Puppets or Wake Up Dead. I know which side of that ideological gap I’ll land on every time. Give me pessimism or doomed romanticism over righteous puritanical fury anyday. And in my humble opinion late thrash, particularly bands like Sepultura and Voivod trump any hardcore band for both the clarity and execution of their respective musical visions.

Of course this is all very problematic, considering that modern hardcore has nearly as much metal in its background as most metal bands do. And the primitivist strain of black metal is very punk influenced, especially any of the bands that follow Darkthrone like Ildjarn or Striborg. And metal-core has really thrown my dislike for punk into the winds, considering that a lot of these ostensibly punk bands seem to worship the NWOBHM more than anything. Iron Maiden, bizarrely, is a major influence on Avenged Sevenfold. But all this is mostly a fairly recent development, if anything metal has consumed everything that made punk interesting and improved upon it.

I still think that hardcore has a purpose though, every couple of years a hardcore band will suddenly mutate into something interesting. It happened for Black Dice, it happened for a lot of the dance oriented punk/indie stuff like !!!, it seems to have a purpose. Maybe hardcore has become something like jazz used to be, a place for musicians to grind their chops into a fine point. One of my favorite doom metal bands, the aforementioned Neurosis would never have existed without their hardcore past. Dance music itself can claim some ex-hardcore musicians, Drew Daniel of the Soft Pink Truth seems to have a history with it. His album in 04, “Do You Want New Wave, or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?” is a collection of house and disco covers of punk and hardcore tracks. Which makes me giggle, I’ve got a soft spot for the Dead Kennedy’s as well. And then there is well, Moby, but lets not talk about him. He’ s had his moment in the sun, I wish him the best. The question remains, why do I like one kind of aggressive rock based music and not the other? Why do I like metal at all, considering I have access to the rarified realms of dance music, with all its capacity for experimentation and promise for the future?

Why love metal? Well for one thing I’m angry a lot of the time. I’m not exactly the most stable of people at the best of times and dance mostly interest me when I’m up, feeling positive. For another it gives me visceral pleasure, I enjoy the sound of well played guitars, bass and drums. It isn’t based purely on nostalgia for my teens, this is something that has changed and grown as much as I have since then. One album I’ve listened to many, many times is Dissection’s Storm of the Light’s Bane. It’s a melodic death/black metal album with a heavy thrash influence, along with some of what I’m guessing is influence from Scandinavian folk music. The man who wrote that album went to prison for the murder of a gay man, after he got out he recorded one more album with a different band of the same name. Then he committed suicide in front of a copy of the Satanic bible, obviously not the nicest person. He was someone who would have found me repellent on a personal basis and might have even tried to harm me if given the chance. I love that album, I love music made by some very sick people, but very talented sick people. Metal attracts extremists, romantics, people dedicated to hopeless and twisted causes. In that it fits me.

It also helps that I’ve got an intensely religious background, understand the antipathy for Christianity on a personal level, and have spent a lot of time reading fantasy books as a young adult. It just fits that side of who I am. I’m no fascist, I believe in democracy and individual liberty, but I believe that metal appeals to my internal fascist. Wilhelm Reich was right in the belief that fascism exists within all of us, that attraction to power, the desire to become part of some righteous cause. It’s a part of myself I monitor, and do not allow it to effect my decision making. Finally I love metal because at its best it is a living breathing folk tradition, a form of working class art music. I don’t spend a lot of time defending things, mostly I criticize, but I’m willing to defend this part of this musical genre. And frankly metal’s romanticism, tons of metal is written about a love of nature, of the woods, etc. is much more appealing these days then the nihilistic materialism of modern hip-hop. I loathe the street culture that has infected that music down to its very roots, initially much of hip-hop was a reaction to this same culture. Afrika Bambataa and the Zulu Nation were a gang that became a force for good, for peace. Young Jeezy and Rick Ross are so far from that they don’t even have a right to use the same name.

Now I sound like a grumpy old man, go read Alex Chang’s Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop or go read his blog at Zentronix. He’s a nice guy, and knows his stuff.