Rolling Metal Thread 2014

Anyway, back on topic. This Hail Spirit Noir album is really good, if you don't mind a healthy does of prog mixed in your metal.

yeah i think its pretty tough to tell when that line into being for-real offended is going to be crossed. i never really minded the band name either but i def feel weird about the song title jon mentioned--i guess it sounds explicitly target-y which is maybe the problem.

well, it is in the imperative

i guess it sounds explicitly target-y which is maybe the problem

yeah that's what I was thinking and couldn't quite articulate it. also is it supposed to be a riff on "smear the queer"

(right i mean i recognized i had that visceral rxn to 'dismember the transgendered' and then remembered that one of my favorite pig destroyer songs is about dismembering a woman and had to think a little harder)

goregrind is specifically about vicariously relating to positions of extreme exaggerated power over the helpless - it's a space for that vibe. it's perfectly ok to say "no, fuck that" obviously but drawing the line anywhere once you're ok with a genre that's about identifying with the victimizer (for whatever purpose: and I personally think there's value in an aesthetic space where that sort of identification can take place - this is something I've talked to fellow abuse survivors about, it's a thing for some people & I for one am down) seems so odd to me. rape & kill indiscriminately, that's swell, but don't do it to the transgendered? c'mon. these bands are about imagining the thought processes of people who victimize, period. they're not about striking a vicarious blow for the genuinely helpless. there are no goregrind bands who sing from the POV of the victim.

ty for that post; has helped reconfigure my above revulsion for 'prostitute disfigurement'

yep, i forgot i can count on ilm to tell me when my opinion or thought process is WRONG.

boy howdy, now i can feel okay with a song called "Dismember the Transgender"!

well, or you can ask yourself why "prostitute disfigurement" was cool with you while "dismember the transgender" isn't

did you even read my posts? that is exactly what i'm questioning.

i get where you're coming from, but how much imagining/vicarious relation do white straight cis dudes have to do to assume a position of power over women/transgendered people tho?

being that I own Anal Blast albums, I ain't even ENTERING this discussion....

and a song about raping and killing indiscriminately IS one thing, but a song specifically about raping and killing a race, a gender identity, etc isn't indiscriminate.

i get where you're coming from, but how much imagining/vicarious relation do white straight cis dudes have to do to assume a position of power over women/transgendered people tho?

it depends on the white straight cis dude? a lot of abuse survivors have a whole lotta issues to work through and violent art is one space for it which I think is what's going on a lot of the time in goregrind. idk I know for a lot of people white + cis = anything that ever happened to you doesn't count as trauma but I think goregrind is largely a space for processing trauma.

i just feel like i kind of put myself out there, displaying my inconsistent thought process and why i'm tripping over what i am or should be comfortable with, explaining why i got to where i am able to draw this particular line in the sand (even if it isn't the one others think i should draw!) and aero comes along to tell me i'm wrong. it's frustrating.

and a song about raping and killing indiscriminately IS one thing, but a song specifically about raping and killing a race, a gender identity, etc isn't indiscriminate.

well no but most of these songs have specific victims? idk maybe social justice goregrind will be a thing but it won't really scare anybody and one thing about goregrind is it's supposed to inspire revulsion, not "fuck yeah, the oppressor really got his from this crazed serial killer" feelings

i do think that agonizing over things like this seems oddly common w/smarty pants metal circles in a way that never happens with like film afficianados or lit geeks, ie questionable protagonist etc

that sounded totally dismissive which i dont mean at all

i just feel like if you worked out your feelings after reading the lyric sheet for angel of death a billion years ago you kind of bought the ticket and took the ride

"social justice goregrind" = Cattle Decapitation, no?

goregrind for me is easy to ignore due to the toiletsauce indecipherable vocal stylings though I admit I'm drawn to cheeseball B-movie motifs/slasher elements. I had a pretty uncomfortable reaction to the "Dismember the Transgender" too only because I just two weeks ago heard two metalheads I was hanging with lamenting how much it sucked that Repulsion had a transgender in the band, and led me to leave the convo.

to date though I'm still most offended by Malevolent Creation deciding to drop "you fucking n****rs" at the end of track 8 on that one album...

true about specif victims! it just seems like the kind of tracks/bands we're talking about are specifically geared towards inspiring revulsion in a certain type of person, and its usually an oppressed person - women, people who have been raped, or whatever - that's not something im down with in a scene that is often very actively hostile to women and gay people. i mean sure, lol social justice goregrind, but there is a lot of goregrind out there that isnt about killing and raping women and calling them cunts from the stage and encouraging the violence against women that happens, constantly, at metal fests/shows! it's really just a few bands that inspire that and act like that and they are typically very noticeable from their names and song titles. just my personal experience tho.

yeah I mean I still think Cattle Decapitation is a really, really elegant metaphor for oppression and abuse, whereas Prostitute Disfigurement is strident and pointed in a way I don't really gel with, but I accept that you can't really abhor the one and embrace the other & expect to be taken coherently

really?

also gr8 post roxy

i just feel like i kind of put myself out there, displaying my inconsistent thought process and why i'm tripping over what i am or should be comfortable with, explaining why i got to where i am able to draw this particular line in the sand (even if it isn't the one others think i should draw!) and aero comes along to tell me i'm wrong. it's frustrating.

yeah I mean...sorry! but it's like...I can't even grasp how absolutely every other song on the album shouldn't also make you feel kind of monstrous? which is the point? it's in the same terrain as Whitehouse essentially.

jjjusten I think lit geeks do have a whole little Bataille-friendly playground for this sort of thing

o roxy of course you can take yourSELF coherently. it's a matter of personal aesthetic rather than doctrine though - aesthetic is coherent, but is often hard for an outsider to appreciate (you seem to understand this particular disparity)

*despairs*

I will say that porngrind does really attract the kind of audience that I don't like to associate with. some of the musicians in these bands are pure loons too. the late Don Decker of A.B. was a regular in this IRC channel we posted in and one day he gleefully shared an interview he'd just done via Word and on reading it I couldn't comprehend how this guy was allowed out in public.

when it comes to grind I'm more into the punkier/crustier type anyway from a sonic perspective, but then again I do own the latest by Analdicktion so.....

thanks for letting me know that i can take myself coherently dude

i meant that one can take oneself coherently, it was a generic you

youre a generic you

im jk, nothing but love

fwiw i still haven't even listened to the record! i bought it, took it home, and scanned the titles when i was ripping off the shrink wrap.

and i get what you are saying, which brings me to my handwringing today, but that particular song title struck me as much more noxious than any of the other ones. like i read "Beaten to the Grave" and it doesn't really registed. but "Dismember the Trangender" was kind of a boot to the head. as you say, that's the intent. but it did make me stop and think.

I think it's actually really good that song has triggered intelligent discussion about it – and I'm not sure that wasn't the intent.

true about specif victims! it just seems like the kind of tracks/bands we're talking about are specifically geared towards inspiring revulsion in a certain type of person, and its usually an oppressed person - women, people who have been raped, or whatever - that's not something im down with in a scene that is often very actively hostile to women and gay people. i mean sure, lol social justice goregrind, but there is a lot of goregrind out there that isnt about killing and raping women and calling them cunts from the stage and encouraging the violence against women that happens, constantly, at metal fests/shows! it's really just a few bands that inspire that and act like that and they are typically very noticeable from their names and song titles. just my personal experience tho.

yeah...I mean I feel you, and part of my engagement with this stuff is how much I often come at it from the other side - like, the unfriendly space you describe, hate that; my favorite grind bands are like Foetopsy, who're pretty clearly joking. But an act like Prostitute Disfigurement, I think there's an essentially Sadean "hurt people's feelings" aesthetic going on - that there's a bad vibe ride that's valid and ok within the context of the work? what you talk about at shows, obviously that's where it gets messy and any questions of what's at stake aesthetically become very different questions.

I'm actually really curious what the lyrics for the song are.

hoo boy, yeah i knew don decker through the scene up here pretty well, and ill just say that he was not terribly separable from the anal blast persona. one fucked up dude

xpost BWARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHGH
KWOWAERRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHGHGHGHG
AAKKKAAKKKAKKKAKKKAKKKAKK!
(drums cut out, next track)

yeah, i get the distinction w/r/t foetopsy et al - i mean there's a lot of really disgusting grind that's some of my favorite music in the world, but it's disgusting in a way that isn't strictly focused on specifically doing harm to women, because that's fucking stupid to me

like 99 out of 100 metal dudes in extremey crazo bands are exactly the pasty D&D nerds you expect under the fake blood and on stage vomiting and then theres that 1 remaining guy xpost

hah yeah I basically was explaining to my non-metalhead friends that most of us are just as geeky as them, but sometimes it's hard to tell who's kidding. ie, I still get the impression that 3/4s of S.O.D. was in on the joke, and then there was Billy Milano

Having so many thougths right now, but basically I feel kinda chastised for being "wrong" about how goregrind works.

there are no goregrind bands who sing from the POV of the victim

This would actually be pretty great, and way more scary/revolting/abject than anything goregrind's coughed up/farted out in quite a while IMO. An experiment worth undertaking.

the violence against women that happens, constantly, at metal fests/shows

I feel like the word "constantly" here might be a little over the top. But I'm not gonna get into it if it's gonna become A Thing (if, for example, the word "cis" is going to be deployed with a straight - no pun intended - face).

there's a pornogrind band around here - a 2 piece - and one of them is DEF not in on the joke, and it's kind of sad but mostly extremely lol to watch them work

xp hahaha i cant

its clear from your post that you've been a woman at a lot of shows though

I have been at lots of shows with women, and observed women at lots of shows. At every show I go to I spend at least as much time watching the audience as watching the band. I have never personally witnessed violence against a woman at a show (a woman being in the pit doesn't count). But whatever, like I said, I am not gonna get into it.

Sorry guys, didn't mean to cluster up the Rolling Metal thread.

I mean, for 98% of my posts on ilx I might as well type them directly into a Word doc for all the interaction I get out of 'em, but this one takes off?

well, or you can ask yourself why "prostitute disfigurement" was cool with you while "dismember the transgender" isn't

― joe perry has been dead for years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, February 17, 2014 5:44 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i mean i think i explained why i feel this way. i guess i prob shouldn't have given the impression that anything about goregrind is really all that cool w/me (and i feel the exact same abt slasher films). it is a fine and not always logical line but i can't prefigure what's going to do it for me. that said, the difference between "dismember the transgender" and "compulsive beheading disorder" (which is pretty lol, credit where it's due) seems obvious to me.

there should be a thing like the Congrats on your 50* tweet! for ilx