Rolling Metal Thread 2014

I don't know why I'm willing to overlook the violence against women thing, but not against the transgendered. Maybe it's because I listened to the new Against Me a lot before I cracked this one open. Like I said, the lines are arbitrary and I don't have a good defense here. But, I'm okay saying that I definitely do not want to hear a song about dismembering the transgendered in my life.

like, Cattle Decapitation and Cock And Ball Torture (.ogg) are great fucken names because they're violent without being openly and brutally callous

lol dude this is a ridiculous standard

people want goregrind that doesn't offend them, like it's ok if it's theoretically offensive but if it genuinely offends then no-go

goregrind does not "punch up"

it descants the insalubrious

I don't see how I could be any more clear about this

essentially tho anything that is a horrific taboo you've gotta imagine will be of thematic interest to taboo-breaking metal outfits

its all part of being "extreme" ro them. If music cant be extreme do it another way. "shock rock" has been around a long time tho.

personally ive no interest in it, not even when i was 15

have you guys heard there's these awful movies where guys in hockey masks basically murder all these teenagers for no reason

So offensive.

To victims of hockey mask murderers of course. And the mother's of hockey mask wearing murderers.

To me it's all fiction. The lyrics that musicians use are no different than the images and themes and dialogue of movies and television. You want to dismember the transgendered? As long as it's a dumb song (or a scene in a dumb movie). Just leave Marissa Martinez alone in real life, okay?

I am more bothered by rape, to be honest, than straight-out violence. Maybe this is because I have known women who were raped who have shared with me stories about how they can't watch rape scenes in movies or TV shows that they actually like because it's personal to them.

I don't know many people who have been tortured and nearly killed who might take some horror movie personally. Maybe if I knew people like that or people who were killed in such a manner that I might feel differently.

I just hate the inconsistencies where one form of abuse or violence is practically sacrosanct in some genres while others are off-limits. I think it's all goofy regardless of whom is being impaled.

in a promo email from Relapse just now:

Recommended If You Like:
My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins, Slowdive, Deafheaven, Torche, Jesu, Title Fight, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Hum, Cold Cave, Loop, True Widow

so I guess 2014 is going to be terrible

― joe perry has been dead for years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, February 10, 2014 7:08 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just playing this Nothing album of which aero speaks and it is both really well done and incredibly opportunistic sounding. it also contains nothing I would describe as metal and I'm fairly lax about protecting the borders so to speak

"nothing" in my second sentence was not a pun btw

I think I'm usually able to treat all of the subject matter and lyrics in this type of stuff as "fiction" and approach them the same way as I would horror movies. But I have a hard time when it comes to violence specifically directed at the gay/queer/transgender communitues. I think its a combination of so much irl hatred against these groups in the media right now and the fact the my wife and I do a lot of donating and volunteer work for groups like HRC that it bumps up against some deeply held personal beliefs. I get how it is, let's say, inconsistent, on one hand. But I also don't feel like I'm a hypocrite for deciding that's where I draw the line for myself, personally. It's up to you where you wanna draw that line.

i draw the line in a really different place, but i appreciate your willingness to explain your purchase of that album. i personally can't treat "prostitute disfigurement" as acceptable because even if it were fiction i wouldn't be amused by/interested in/want anything to do with it.

Yeah, I get it, the whole thing has really made me question why I wouldn't and didn't draw the line elsewhere.

Now I do feel weird about throwing my thought process out there.

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.