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, there seem to be quite a few MRAs of the casual sex is evil (for women) persuasion, social conservatives like our friend Slavey. In the event that they ever find themselves backstage at a metal show they’re going to be rather distressed.
A Voice for Men is ruining my life. Argh.
Oh man, I’d forgotten the Breaking the Law video had synchronized almost-line-dancing bits. It’s like one of the gang fights from West Side Story with leather pants and guitars.
The whole riding in the car with the top down thing doesn’t have quite the same effect when you’re in cold, windy England.
@CassandraSays
I read it as a Status Quo thing, but that’s hilarious.
Can I just say that I know fuck-all about metal but am really enjoying this conversation.
@lowquacks
The Painkiller album was a moment of cleansing for Priest, after “Turbo” and “Ram it Down;” total metal-guitar awesomeness, the Painkiller record.
I have to comment on this MRA guitarist: he does not play leads on any of his youtube tracks. He “riffs,” he “jams,” like my 10-year-old guitar students, and it looks like he thinks he’s really awesome for it, like my 10-year-old guitar students think they’re so cool! The music is very repetitive—very repetitive! This is really funny/ironic, because in rock guitar culture, and especially in heavy metal guitar culture, it’s all about your leads, your “chops.” Your prowess, your status, comes from technique, speed, cleverness in lead/solo playing. This MRA guitarist would be considered a “poser,” no one would take his playing seriously.
@Guy Noir
I kinda see where you’re coming from, but you are talking about a very well-respected band that had a guitar configuration probably best described as “dual rhythm”.
Here we’ve got KK Downing (Glenn Tipton?) hammering a F# for 5 minutes: (there’s a small break, but still)
Sloppy, unoriginal rhythm guitar though? I get where you’re coming for with that being poserly.
I was never really a Metallica fan, but see also James Hetfields’ playing being as respected as much or more than Kirk Hammet’s pentatonic-licks-really-fast-with-wah.
I’m almost completely disengaged from anything you might call a “metal culture”, and particularly from guitar culture, though, though I do love both metal and guitars.
@ Guy Noir
Funny you should mention the repetition issue, because I finally moved on the a review CD that I don’t like, and that’s the reason why. I’m on track 7 and I feel like I’ve been listening to the same 60 seconds on loop for half an hour, with slightly varying Cookie Monster vocals. Why do bands do this? Metal shouldn’t make you feel like taking a nap.
@lowquacks
My engagement with metal culture is mostly turn up for a show, get leers and hostile comments about what is a girl doing in the press pit, then stand at the back and try not to let any of the obnoxious drunk guys spill beer on me. It’s not that I mind crowds and pushing – I’m fine at punk shows. It’s just that a lot of metal crowds are, um, not the most enlightened people. It’s always awesome when you go to a show and it doesn’t have that vibe.
Interestingly enough I found metal crowds a lot friendlier and more fun in the UK than here. I had a great time at Donnington the year that I saw Iron Maiden, and you don’t get much more metal than that.
I think the Swagger brothers Dark Star Disco need a lot more cowbell.
I get the feeling that metal as a thing is treated as far more serious and manly and obviously superior to and different from other music in the US, which could be a part of it.
I know that when I was about 13 I thought I was so clever for listening to Real Music That Wasn’t Like All That Pop Crap, and every now and again I get the feeling that several people in the metal scene haven’t grown out of that secret-club mentality. Add to that that it’s probably the genre with the strongest right-leaning and violent tendencies and most overwhelmingly male fanbase and you’re guaranteed to get a few problems.
That said, there are heaps of fantastic people who love metal and play metal and go to metal shows and so on.
I actually met one of those liking metal makes you so superior guys when I first got to the US. What made it hilarious was that he was in his mid 30s, and his favorite band was Dokken.
Hardcore, dude.
Rock on, dude! Yeah, the attitude does seem to go along with non-extreme metal, or the more accessible/widely-available extreme metal (very basic Norwegian black metal, Gothenburg death, or your Lambs of God and Deicides and so on in a US context)
Foxy Shazam’s “Holy Touch” has the humor of The Darkness and Priest, and the whole the whole song is such tongue-in-cheek cheese that I almost piss myself laughing every time I hear it.
I saw Slayer once, and it was probably one of the best live shows I’ve ever been to.
Defensiveness because you know that your metalhead peers think that your favorite bands are all weaksauce? Sounds like a possibility.
Lamb of God has an odd crowd here. Again, I have nothing against moshpits, but when every single person comes out bleeding I start thinking that maybe folks need to find a better way to either channel their aggression or prove their manly toughness. The most fun crowds I can remember were for Boris (stoner metal), Russian Circles (too nerdy for people to get mean, maybe), and Apocalyptica (how mean and hardcore can you really get when you’re watching a band do Metallica covers with cellos?).
@hellkell
I introduced one of my cheesy-rock-loving friends to Foxy Shazam, and they soon became her favourite band. Of course, when I’m publically thanked for this via facebook, it’s using this racist piece-of-crap song. Ugh, though they’d always been slightly guilty of racial fetishism. I love early Foxy, but with the exception of that one song they do seem to have collapsed into an Airbourne-level hard-rock-photocopy act recently
cont: The Darkness have a new album out I’m avoiding for fear of similar disappointment.
@CassandraSays
Do you have anything in the way of metal qualifications? I’ve been arguing that Boris should count as metal with one friend for ages.
It’s probably more that these people are reasonably recently into metal, or haven’t done much examination of it, both of which would go nicely with being into fairly well-known bands, and don’t realise how silly everything can look from the outside and how much metal just another type of music.
@ lowquacks
It’s like the old definition of porn, you know it when you see/hear it? Over here Boris is typically considered metal, and they’re on a label that does nothing except stoner metal. They’re a lot of fun live, btw, if you ever get the chance to see them.
This is all really lovely, by the way, so thanks to any Men Boobzer not into metal who’ve kept out of the way here (though you really don’t have to; this is probably the most derail-friendly comments section ever). I haven’t properly listened to or talked about or engaged with heavy music properly in ages.
Seconded – thank you, tolerant of derails fellow commenters. A lot of metal forums are so full of pretentious annoying crap that I don’t get to talk about it as often as I’d like.
Which is especially funny when you’re talking about the Nordic black metal or power metal stuff. Dude, you are wearing a fucking Viking hat and/or corpse-paint makeup – have some perspective.
Yeah, not sure if it was clear before but I’d call Boris metal – Pink in particular struck me as “insane Japanese Motorhead”. I see very little non-local-and-cheap live music because of a limited disposable income and preferring to go with friends, who often don’t want to travel to the city or don’t like stuff I like, but I’ll keep that in mind if they come down this way.
@CassandraSays
I can never tell how much of the “tr00 kvlt” and “br00tal” stuff is facetious/in fun/self-aware and how much is serious, so I tend to assume it’s the second if I’m reading any metal stuff online, and that does make things a bit easier.
I like to pretend that they’re mostly being facetious – less depressing that way.
If that’s not the case…enjoy your hats, guys.
Why should we mind your derails? It’s even civil. 🙂