Thrashbrowns Loses his Religion: Pt. 7

 

Metal Church

For years after I stopped going to church, I left to door to returning cracked slightly open.

I knew that leaving left a huge void inside, a chasm-like emptiness that I might have to fill again someday. I felt that emptiness in the core of my soul or whatever the fuck I have in there. Hell, some days I still feel it even now. So I always left myself a way back.

At least until June 26, 2017, I did.

That night, my work sent me to a Korn/Stone Sour show in Pocatello. While I'd been to concerts before, this was the first time I got to watch the show from the pit. I was there to do a job, so I was only half-engaged. But even in that mindset, something hit me differently at that show. Something about church.

People attend church for many different reasons, but a huge part of why I went for so long was because I was looking for belonging, validation, a sense of identity and peace of heart and mind. I was promised those very treasures, too, provided I did my part.  And I did my part to the best of my ability.

But I didn't find a place to belong. I didn't find validation or a sense of identity or peace. I didn't find any of that shit. And whenever I'd ask why I was failing so hard in spite of my best efforts, I was always told it was because of something I was or was not doing. It was always my fault. I get it. We're the ones that have to make our way to God and our paths can be barricaded by any number of things we're either committing in our lives or omitting from them. Nothing about that doesn't make sense.

I also remember being told many, many times that all the Lord expected from me was my best. I was giving my best and not seeing any progress. That was really the frustrating part, the lack of progress in spite of my best efforts. You can only bang your head against an immovable object for so long before you say "Fuck it."

So I said "Fuck it" and walked away.

Then, on that evening at the Portneuf Amphitheater, it hit me. As I stood in the midst of all the bodies in motion, I felt it. I WAS connected to something bigger than myself. I felt like I was right where I was supposed to be all along. I had a vivid realization about who and what I was as a person. And for the rest of the time I spent at that show, I felt peace in my heart and mind. I had found where I needed to be to find all that stuff I was told I'd find at church. 

That night, June 26, 2017, the door to me ever returning to church slammed all the way shut.

*****

If I really bake my bean thinking about it, I think Mormon Church culture is so against metal because we're taught to not only avoid evil, but also the appearance of evil. No music genre appears to be more evil than metal. The singers howl and screaming and roar, all while dispensing lyrics about war, death, religion, sex, politics and the goddamn devil himself. The bands used to dress up in leather and spikes and giant hairdos. Some bands performed all kinds of depraved acts as part of their live shows. The album art is all dark and demonic or sexually suggestive imagery.

So, now that I'm older and have the benefit of hindsight, I can kinda see why that might be offputting (or worse) to people of deep religious faith. Just a couple of things, though.

1. If the imagery and sound of metal so terrify you, you never get to the substance. And there is some substance there that is worth exploring.

2. I don't recall hearing a lot of complaints from the Mormon parents around me about the pop or country music so many of their kids were listening to. All that music was full of sex, drugs and violence. The country music double standard was particularly galling to me because it was every bit as dirty and obsessed with substances as metal ever was. Good hell, I knew people who thought Garth Brooks was a chubby, chicken fajita-eating deity because he told someone "I'll head back to the bar and you can kiss my ass" in the third verse of Friends in Low Places. Bold choice of words, Garth. (Not.)  

The obvious lesson here is that, where Mormon culture is concerned, as long as an artist looks and sounds acceptable, said artist can sing about anything from mass murder to fucking sheep with a French Tickler.

******

Ok, I got sidetracked there for a sec. Let's get back on track.

So, the cliche is that metalheads are burn-outs that love Satan and evil and that's why they love metal. I don't know every metalhead on the planet so I have to concede that it's entirely possible that there indeed are metalheads out there who only love the music cuz evil or some such shit. It's just that I've never met a single metalhead who listens to the music purely for the evil.

Then again, A LOT of metal-related stuff gets misread or misinterpreted. Good hell, the Devil Horns hand gesture isn't what most churchy people think it is. It doesn't contain the 666 talked about in the bible in the book of Revelation. Ok, yeah it does if that's what you're looking for but that's incidental. According to Ronnie James Dio, who popularized the Horns in the metal context, it was a gesture his grandmother taught him to protect him from evil. But it does look badass when a sea of hands is doing the Horns at a show.

Anyway, because I only live in my own head, I can only speak to why I listen to and love metal. So let me try to condense this down a bit.

On the most basic level, I love metal cuz I love big, noisy guitars playing big, noisy riffs. As a young kid, I was a guitar nerd who was always looking for music that more prominently featured the instrument. Yes, country and a lot of jazz feature a lot of guitar. But I'm not smart enough to listen to jazz and country music kills brain cells, so fuck that.

But no music puts the guitars out front more aggressively and obnoxiously than metal. Not only that, but the musicians playing these guitars conjure so many different sounds and textures out of their instruments, that you're never stuck just listening to one kind of guitar sound. There's everything from the angry bus engine guitars of old In Flames albums to the buzzing weedeater guitar of old-school black metal to of lush, three-dimensional tones of proggy, djenty bands like Periphery. Oh, there's also the way Matt Pike of High on Fire uses fuzz and distortion to turn his rig into a fart generator. I love it all, and at the most basic level, that's what first drew me to metal.

That's not what keeps my head banging, though.

I also do appreciate the aesthetics of darkness and noise associated with metal. I like how it scares the squares. Like Lemmy from Motorhead said, "if the parents don't like it, it's good."

That's not what keeps my head banging, either.

Metal also doesn't have rules, apart from volume and electricity. Even those can be bent. Don't believe me, go listen to Tenacious D. The music also presents issues from a number of different perspectives. This encourages listeners to think outside the box and make up their own minds about life, the universe and everything. I'm not saying every metalhead learns anti-conformist thinking from listening to metal, but it definitely helped me to break out of Mormon group think.

But this is also not what keeps my head banging.

*****

I didn't have a lot of friends in high school, especially not early on. I kind of floated from clique to clique, trying to find someone, anyone, who would accept me. There was a catch. I had to feel safe enough to be something that resembled myself. I didn't have much success. Half the time, I felt like the only reason anyone let me hang out is that I had access to a car whenever I wanted it.

I also got picked on a lot. Jocks, cowboys, churchy people, they all seemed to think I existed to be the butt of their mockery. To be fair, I was an easy target and I didn't exactly make it easier on myself. I was weird, fat, unathletic and on top of all that, I played into all kinds of rumors that went around about me. I guess I figured the best way to make myself seem cool was if I made myself seem notorious.

Suffice it to say, I was pretty fucking miserable. I cried a lot. And every time I did, I was able to turn to my music to help me get through it. Sometimes, all I had to do was put on Judas Priest, slap on my headphones and lie on my bed as Rob Halford's wraith-like shriek whisked me off to the world of The Metallion.

Sometimes, I needed something more intense. That was when I'd grab my boom box, start up Overkill's Horrorscope album, wander out to the yard and just scream all my demons away. Good thing I lived out in the country.

Every time I needed someone, metal was there for me. Any time I had issues I didn't feel I could talk about with my folks, I could pop on my headphones and work shit out in my own head. When I got lonely, I could listen to a favorite album and it was like having a great conversation with a good friend. Metal never judged me the way the assholes at school or church did. Metal never let me down. Metal was just always - ALWAYS - there for me. And still is to this very fucking day. I mean I'm typing this while The Grand Conjuration by Opeth plays on my stereo. And all is right with the world.

THAT is what keeps my head banging.

*****

Back to the mosh pit at that Korn show. As I stood there trying to get photos of Korn rocking out for the story I was gonna end up writing the next day, it all came rushing in on me. Not the raging throng of pit kids, but the realization of how fucking lucky I was. I WAS part of something so much bigger than myself. So was the fat dude who moshed past me smelling like weed. And the hot chick I was hoping would show her tits to Stone Sour. (She didn't. Sad face.) So was the little squirt who was half my size and moshed into me, knocking me on my ass and breaking my glasses. We weren't individuals. We were all part of the same horde. We were all one hand throwing up the Horns. Metal. As. Fuck.

I was overcome by that realization but I wasn't done having my mind blown yet. As I made the 90-minute drive home, so many experiences I'd had with metal came rushing back to mind. All the times screaming along to I Hate by Overkill had kept me going through high school. All the times I'd wanted to kill myself and Killswitch Engage's The Arms of Sorrow had stopped me from doing it. The weeks of misery I felt during the two attempts I made to de-metal myself by boxing up all my music and giving it to friends so I wouldn't be able to listen to it. 

I remembered how metal made me feel validated and like someone out there knew how I felt. I remembered how much fun it was to drive around Rexburg yelling Body Count lyrics at rednecks. But most of all, I remembered that when everyone else I knew thought I was a worthless sack of shit, metal didn't. Metal accepted me for me, as fucking hopeless as I might have been. It might be weird to anthropomorphize a music genre, but I can't help it. Whenever I've needed someone and everyone else seems to have given up on me, metal is still like "Yo. Wanna hang out?" That means EVERYTHING to me.

And since that stuff was what I was looking for but didn't get from my church experience, I came to the conclusion that going to church served no purpose for me. Why continue to try to be part of a group that didn't want me? Why continue to bang my head up against that fucking wall without ever making progress? Why do I need church when I get everything I needed from the church from my music? The short answer: I don't.

One of the shittiest things about COVID is that concerts and the like have been canceled. Thankfully, a lot of bands have turned to the internet to keep giving us live music experiences, or at least as close to the live music experience as we can get without risking spreading the disease (lolz... any Anthrax fans?) and possibly decimating the metal community. But I can't wait to get back to where I belong, at a show, letting the big guitars and explosive percussion wash over me, throwing up the horns until my arms ache and screaming myself hoarse. Metal is my church now. It's the only church I will ever need.