The manly men at A Voice for Men do love their manly music! You may recall the asskickingly asskicking asskickery of “Go My Own Way,” the A Voice for Men anthem, as performed by Jade Michael and the Fuck Their Shit Up Singers Crew. And the “red pill honesty” of Slumberwall’s emo-folk (but totally not wussy) meditation“The Hatred of Women.”
Now, in a post with the dopily macho title “The weekend’s here. Swagger, brothers. Swagger,” AVFM contributor Skeptic presents a new video from his band Dark Star Disco.
No, it doesn’t quite match the terrible grandeur of either of the earlier MRA anthems. The music is utterly unexceptional testosterone-heavy rock-tronica that sounds like it just escaped from the nineties. And it’s 15 minutes long. But Skeptic is quite proud of it, nonetheless. As he describes it, in phrases as clichéd as the song itself:
We are sonically in your face – wall of sound — chainsaw wailing guitar, piercing electro synth and pounding rock rhythms.
Skeptic contributes the guitar – sorry, the “chainsaw wailing guitar” – to the sound. He apparently prefers guitars to women, as they don’t talk back:
I strut on guitar and love it. Nowhere do I feel more alive. Swagger.
I’ve been playing guitar for many years – self-taught. Swagger.
My guitars have helped me cathart during times of feminist insanity more times than I can recall. I truly don’t know how I would have made it this far without playing guitar. For my guitar doesn’t make maddening “man up” BS demands and treat me with misandry as a disposable utility.
The video, even less original, consists of pilfered stock footage of an assortment of putatively manly things, starting with, yes, a missile. (Oh, hello, Dr. Freud1) Let’s let Skeptic describe his creation:
It’s chock full of images men can relate to – a guided missile, eagle and cheetah hunting, jet aircraft and a high powered motorcycle at full throttle, runway dance swagger, military teamwork and bravery, high tech playfulness, raw wilderness, cutting edge scientific research, urban spaces constructed and running at full tilt and moving at a blistering pace into a future city of lights. It’s what men do. It’s cram packed with stuff feminists shit their pants over – unapologetic swaggering masculinity.
I dig it. It’s ballsy.
Just so you know, the “runway dance swagger” in question refers not to a fashion model shaking his or her stuff in a runway show, but to some dude doing a little victory dance on an runway for, like , airplanes.
Of course, Skeptic is making some assumptions here. We don’t actually know the gender of all those flying the planes (or driving the cars, or riding the motorcycle like an asshole) in the video. For the sake of argument, let’s just assume they are all male.
But the cheetah? Either Skeptic thinks all cheetahs are boy cheetahs, or he thinks that girl cheetahs sit on their fat asses eating cheetah bon bons and living off of Cheetalimony. In fact, of course, both male and female cheetahs hunt for their food. That ballsy swaggering masculine cheetah in his video may well be a gal.
If there are any stray misogynists reading this post who are unwilling to accept that female cheetahs can hunt, skip ahead to 1:30 in the video below to see one cheetah mom chase down a gazelle just like the cheetah in Skeptic’s video.
Here, a female cheetah faces down three hyenas to protect her cubs.
In other words, female cheetahs are badasses. So are male cheetahs.
Skeptic is just a plain old jackass.
If any of you actually listened to Dark Star Disco’s little masterpiece, or any of the other songs I linked to above, and need to clear your ears of all that manly man stuff, might I suggest “Crochet,” by Kathleen Hanna’s side project Julie Ruin?
Also, I’m sitting here doing album reviews as we speak (thanks, band that sent bright red vinyl as a promo thing but were smart enough to send a CD too!), and even though what I’m listening to is a pretty mixed bag (of metal), every single one of these random submissions is far better than any of the MRA “anthems” we’ve heard to date.
@Guy Noir
I hear less cymbal, but yeah, it’s pretty obvious where they’ve cribbed that from.
@CassandraSays
Did someone say “like Priest, but crap, and with synths”?
I actually don’t get why this particular one gets as much hate as it does (historical reasons, probably: Our True Metal Fathers Judas Priest were experimenting with trendy girly hair-metal), but it’s certainly not up to par compared with a lot of earlier and later efforts.
Fantastically cheesy video, too.
Oh man, Turbo Lover is hilarious. Why can’t everyone appreciate the cheesy goodness?
Truly, it was a great loss when green screening stopped looking silly (and when stop motion went out of vogue).
I can clearly remember the first time I saw that video, on MTV when it came out. My friend and I, teenage metalheads, nearly peed ourselves laughing. Her big sister, devoted Priest fan, was quite upset with us. But we were laughing with them!
It’s not as if previous Priest videos weren’t semi-unintentionally hilarious, anyway:
Robbing banks with the power of HEAVY METAL ROCK AND ROLL!
That was my point about Priest. Everything they do is hilarious. I mean, have you seen their stage costumes? They basically do Pantomime Metal.
I mean, that one dips into narmy territory even without the video with Halford yelling “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIIIIIKE!” over police siren sound effects.
I think a lot of ’70s UK heavy metal groups had a subtle sense of humour that’s not as common any more in traditionalist metal. You do get straight-out jokey bands influenced by that stuff, normally on the lighter side, your Darknesses and what have you, but I couldn’t ever imagine, say, 3 Inches of Blood, to pick a particularly Priesty band, being quite as much fun to listen to.
Re:costumes, it’s more that everyone else is doing ultra-serious metal in comparison, seeing as the whole leather-and-chains-and-studs thing in a metal context comes almost entirely from Rob Halford’s sense of style.
And hey, if you’re going to do hilariously over the top metal pantomime, this is the way to do it.
Everything I’ve seen about Halford leads me to believe that he was half kidding and half serious with the whole YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE, CHECK OUT ALL MY LEATHER AND STUDS stuff. Like, he genuinely does like that stuff, but he also realizes how funny it is from an objective POV. Unfortunately many of his fans do not share that self-awareness.
That’s what I meant about the subtle humour. It’s like the difference between a loving parody and mean-spirited spoofing; feeling things or loving things and realising how silly that can look from the outside, as opposed to savagely mocking an idea. Priest’s music is lovingly crafted but not self-indulgent.
My favourite over-the-top Judas Priest bit would have to be from the previously-posted PAINKILLER:
See, that’s brilliant, but also patently ridiculous.
Yep. You can’t effectively parody something that you don’t understand – it has to be done with love, or it doesn’t work. It’s even better when the parody is subtle. I just wish there were more metal fans who got that – the super serious no really metal will save the world ones are such a downer.
“YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE, CHECK OUT ALL MY LEATHER AND STUDS” also has rather a more serious side in the context of ’70s Rob Halford, too, which I think possibly might have helped with creating that seriousness-without-stiffness?
@CassandraSays
On the other hand, Manowar/Dragonforce or, on the other end, any band with references to goats or anuses in their name can get tedious, because it’s too obvious. Definitely get you here – it’s a fine balance.
Yep, that too – there’s some genuine frustration going on there. I have so much respect for Halford for actually coming out when he did. There are plenty of other guys who still don’t have the guts to do it.
Also, what is it with the pigs? If I never see another band with some variation of SWINE in the name I’ll be a very happy girl, because it’s getting old.
Hmm, not sure about saying people “don’t have the guts to come out”, seems like shaming people for not doing something quite personal and dangerous and momentous.
I am very amused when I read that people were surprised by Rob Halford’s coming-out, though.
I haven’t seen many pig names, but I don’t really follow metal anymore.
Yeah, I understand why they don’t, and I really dislike outing people as a concept. I do think it took a lot of courage for Halford to come out, though, because the backlash could easily have been much worse. Was I surprised, though? Nope, not that he was gay. That he came out? Yes, I was pretty damn surprised about that. And even more surprised that the backlash wasn’t a whole lot worse, because on the whole the metal community is pretty damn homophobic.
Yeah, the pig thing is weird. Usually written in German, so I assume they think they’re being super cool and rebellious by alluding to the Nazis. I wish people would stop doing that.
Of course!
See, that’s the thing. Thinking of Halford’s coming out as brave and unexpected? Perfectly understandable. Being shocked that your favourite leather-and-chains-clad singer of camp ubermacho songs about alienation could possibly be gay at a time? Pretty bloody funny.
The girl who I mentioned earlier was so upset when he came out because she’d had this fantasy that some day he would be her boyfriend. I was like, for serious? This possibility had never occurred to you?
But hey, at least she didn’t freak out and burn all her Priest albums, which is what I was kind of worried might happen if he ever came out. The metal audience actually surprised me in a good way that time, although I don’t know if they’d have been as reasonable if it had been someone less established.
Needs more umlauts. It’s not metal if it doesn’t have at least one umlaut.