Alright, im about to head to a metal show and im
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PISSED.
That's right, im filled with the rage of a thousand suns ready to burst at the seams.
Well, that's good right? You should be PISSED at a metal show. And you would be right except for one thing: I am PISSED that the lead singer of the band I am seeing (Fuming Mouth) is not as good looking as I thought.
Ah, that makes sen...wait WHAT?
Ya, you read me correctly. When this show going on at the Meadows (where I went to that enraged Black punk/hardcore concert last March) first caught my eye, I had a very specific image on who Fuming Mouth was based on their Spotify profile. I saw two gangly instrumentalists being led by who I thought was an adonis of a demonic man in the lead singer: Mark Whelan (not to be confused with other Mark Whelans).
A few years back I wrote an article about the juvenile nature omnipresent in the metal scene with most bands appealing primarily to a limited male demographic explaining why most metal was so poorly made for its first 40 years of existence. I mostly stand by that with the exception of having found there are more than just a handful of bands making legitimately great metal/hardcore/drone, to finding at least 30 such bands, nearly all from 2011 and later. Having had the pleasure of seeing some of these bands live, I can tell you outside of Zulu (whose lead singer is a Black man in America) and Dillinger Escape Plan (who really only have one great album), most of the bands have singers who would hardly be noticed in a room if they werent yelling loudly into a microphone.
On this Cupid's weekend, where I find myself once again without a Valentine (besides her of course), i was intrigued by the idea of seeing a veritable man-God cast his grumbling voice into the abyss while bumpin and grindin with my fellow metal enthusiastics. Despite this man being the height of feminine desire, he still had the anger and rage blistering within would give me comfort. Not only proving that there was more to life than your sexcapades, but that really really ridiculously good looking men could do anything that more homely men could do.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND MY ANGUISH?
After having discovered this band approximately 1 year ago through the calamity of an album that was Last Day Of the Sun (which was apparently written while Whelan was undergoing treatment for Leukemia which makes this article seem in really poor taste), everytime I heard one of their songs come up on my metal comp, I would envision this tall, dark, and handsome man yelling, yelling everything his soul felt, everything that my soul felt (despite not exactly fitting the image of tall & dark) and it gave me, despair, but underlined with hope in the penultimate feeling of "despope".
Now that image is shattered, and its a devastating loss for the truth of aesthetics. Sure Lars Ulrich (I mean James Hetfield) was a bit of a hunk, but Metallica was more foundational than transcendental with their music mostly reflecting the shallowness of their mass appeal. Ozzy, the original prince of darkness (and our hearts), was more making hard psychedelic music than true hardcore death metal, while Judas Priest used the other good looking members to "cheerleader effect" for 5/10 Ian Hill. Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Eddie Vedder and the glam-grunge singer Layne Staley all proved, to a certain extent, good looking men could go hard, but their CDs still fit nicely into the "alt" section of your local Borders. Certainly there are plenty of soft rock and indie bands led by good looking men from Sonic Youth, whose 6' 6" lead Thurston Moore is probably one of the few time fronting a successful rock band actually led to less sex since he had to spend so much time tuning his guitars, to the modern day Latinx-lover Tall Juan (who DID NOT appreciate my antics). But experimental indie is far from the domain deathcore music, even if it contains some elements of hardcore.
It would appear impossible for there to be a man who is both quite good looking and quite talented and quite angerful. Of course, any man who was talented and that good looking would have very little trouble securing a Valentine's (or two) and thus have no capacity for despope, but I thought maybe this one could be different. A man who sees above the shallowness inherent in human desire and, like me on this most Romantic of weekends, is
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PISSED.
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