happy Easter!

I saw Immortal this week. I may write something longer about Norwegians in greasepaint playing black metal at a later date, but Easter feels an odd day to discuss it.

In lieu of that, here is some happy Sesame Street footage.



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Okay, a bit more. The guys I saw Thursday night look like this:



and they make videos like this:



(a series of stylistic decisions, of course, that leaves them ripe for detournements such as this:)



But. Here's the thing.

They are so fucking metal. They could not possibly be any more metal. One of the people who convinced me to go to the show was a hardcore metal fan, the kind of guy who drops names like Decapitator and Mayhem the way I drop Superchunk and The Mountain Goats. He has long hair, solely for the purpose of thrashing in a circle at metal shows. (I asked.) And he turned to me halfway through and said, "This is the most metal experience of my life!"

And that was without the firebreathing, which sadly didn't happen. It was just ninety minutes of full-on metal, with lots of shades of darkness. Despite my near-chronic inability to recognize different metal songs, it never became boring to me, and the fact that this was a cathartic and legendary experience for those around me who may have been waiting almost twenty years for it just added to the joy.

So, yeah. It was awesome. Especially the bit near the end where the singer said in his Cookie Monster voice: "Thank you, Auckland ... Australia!" The riff started, and six seconds he later he came to the mic, realizing his mistake, and added, "New Zealand! Sorry!".

(Incidentally, I learned at this show that metal shows have very little applause between songs, because everybody is holding their hands in the air making the metal sign after shows.)

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The issue I was alluding to at the top, and one I haven't got my head around properly writing about, is to whether I should or should not have an ethical issue spending money - and in Immortal's case, it was a LOT of money ($80 NZ) - on bands who have beliefs I find disturbing. Now, in Immortal's case, the more I investigate the less I find to really bother me - these guys aren't killing their bandmates or burning down churches. And really, if the choice of values is this:



or this:



or this:



then it's not that problematic for me to spend $80 on what's behind door #1. But I do think it is an issue all too easily dodged. On a seemingly unrelated tangent, I've been listening a lot to Clipse lately, who are fully awesome but also fully dedicated to their subject matter of cocaine dealing and related material acquisition:



Of course, Clipse would not give a shit if I said "hey, why guys gotta rap about coke?" - they basically say that in so many words on the WE GOT IT FOR CHEAP VOL. 3 mix-tape, which is credited to Re-Up Gang but includes members of Clipse.

But I do think a lot about what values are being put into the world. And while I don't think good values makes good music -



- (and fuck, I didn't remember that song being THAT bad) -

- I'm not sure if they're mutually exclusive. Anyway, this is more a "something I'm mulling on" than "something I've reached any conclusions over".

Hope you had a good Easter weekend.