Being a Metaller.

[Eoin McLove]

I had the second part of the Sligo Whiplash podcast on this morning and one thing that was said really struck a chord. One of the lads mentioned Black Betty getting played in the mosh set at their local disco back in the day and I laughed as that was a fixture of the mosh set at the Celbridge Club na nÓg disco when I was going from 94 to 98 or 99. The sheer scrapings of anything that resembled heavy music would be jumped on by our teenage ears and we would just take what was on offer.

Of course being a seasoned gig goer by then, as me and my friends were, we were holding forth in the pit and thinking we were old hands. Our moshing was a cut above! It's all so innocent, childish and ludicrous in one way, but in another it was important to us as we defined ourselves from the rest of our peers. There was, and for me at least, there still is a sense of pride and honour in wearing metal t-shirts and keeping the tradition alive in my own way.

Hearing them talk about all of that, buying magazines and hanging up posters and getting cool t-shirts, rings a bell with me. I am sure many or most here can relate to that youthful enthusiasm. For all of us on this forum it clearly hasn't gone away so as young lads we were laying a strong foundation for who we would grow up to be.

I often wonder what I would have turned out like if I hadn't become obsessed with metal at a young age. If I had been more focused on school and had a career path in mind rather than spending my teenage years daydreaming and trying to get the lads to jam. Being in a band and writing music was all I wanted to do, everything else was a bit of an afterthought, and for all of that I have so many great memories.

 

[Eoin McLove]

From Büürgermeister in the Simple Pleasures thread:

"Being a musician has changed, the whole scene is so different. You used to be someone who played in shit bands to no-one and gradually worked your way up to decent bands who could draw a crowd. You encounteresd all kinds of shit and surreality which helped you evolve as a player and a human being. Now, there's a generation of people who are "paying their dues" by performing covers in front of a ring-shaped light in their bedroom. It's mental to me. They dress up, give it socks to a camera by themselves and this is where the next generation of players are learning their craft. No life experience, just a strange ring-shaped light which they shake their thing in front of. Fucking mental."

This is relevant to my above post. Some of the first gigs I played in the 90s were so fucking retarded but at the time we didn't care, we were getting to play gigs!

One of my first bands, Crawlspace (name robbed from Brutal Truth but the music was sadly nowhere near that level of extremity*), played three notable gigs and I can't remember exactly which order they occurred. One was a Christmas party for the Grove House which was a home for elderly mental patients. All these old doddery dementia ridden crusties sitting around with party hats while me and my pals were roaring and shouting at the front of the hall, and 20 or 30 "fans" were kicking the shite out of each other 

Another highlight of our career was doing an acoustic set (of Metal songs!) for the local road sweeper's retirement. All these local old people watching a bunch of teenage muppets making a racket with a few pals there as support.

One gig we did that was actually cool, but thanks be to fuck there were no phones to record things back then so we can retain the positive memory without any reality having to creep in to blemish our glory. We played at the Club na nÓg disco in front of several hundred people! We also got an interview in the local newspaper, The Liffey Champion! Heady heights indeed. 

Ah, so much innocence, so many high hopes, so much enthusiasm and cluelessness. Good times. Reading Büürgermeister's post saddens me. Kids might never get these opportunities to learn the ropes away from the cynical scrutiny of YouTube. We were all young and thought we were deadly, and our 'fans' were the exact same. A gig was a gig was a fuckin gig!

* I still kick myself for not trying to push the lads to play something more wild and extreme when we were young. We all listened to bits of death metal and black and doom but never attempted to write that stuff until The State Pathologist... which grew out of one of our earlier, crappier alt-metal efforts.

[The Wretch]

I think if you were a youngster in a small town here in the 80's or 90's, and you had any sort of imagination, becoming a metal fan was a great thing to get into.

And also, becuase there were so few of us "weirdos" that all of the heads - at least where I grew up - tended to stick together, so we had the classic hard rock and trad metal lads, the thrashers and death metal fans, and even a few who were heavily into the whole glam thing hanging out together, along with the goths, Cureheads, punks, bikers, skinheads, even a few of the rockabilly lads, and people into anything that was considered beyond the norm at that stage, from Frank Zappa, to Nick Cave, to the Butthole Surfers. Like a gang that embraced all of the subcultures around at the time.

We were all of a similar background then too - Largely working class, some of us were related, or our parents were friends, many of us were close neighbours from the same part of the town etc.   

But yeah, as far as metal itself goes, finding heavier and more way out stuff, getting excited at anything metal related, even the odd video on telly, or song on the radio, and even putting up with all of the shite music and lads wanting to kick off to get to the rock set at the local nighclub, growing your hair and wearing your leather jacket to school (and I remember being allowed to bring 'And Justice For All' into school to discuss the lyrics, and even playing some of the songs in class,one of my few fond memories of that shithole) getting your first obscure or extreme metal shirts and parading around town, and occasionally being lucky enough to meet a lass who was into that stuff, going to your first real gigs, travelling to Dublin to go to Sound Cellar, joining and forming bands and travelling around the country, sometimes playing to empty places, sometimes getting a great reception and making friends in other bands, drinking cheap booze and getting off your face. Brilliant fucking times. 

For me it is also tied up with friends that I lost along the way. A couple of the older metal lads that accepted me when I was 12 or so (they weren't massively older, but a few years seem like a lifetime at that age) were killed in bike crashes, and another killed himself. Also, I was in a car crash at 17, and one of my best mates died, and the fallout after destroyed our friend group.

So even though I have made other friends into metal since, a lot of my passion, aside from loving the music itself, and finding a style that fed into all my other interests - Fantasy, horror, history etc - and lot of my attachment is about carrying on the spirit of the lads we lost in a positive way, keeping the spirit of Independence, remembering that you have your mates, your music and the craic even when things turn to shit, rather than just becoming miserable and cynical.

Bands from Sabbath, Maiden and Accept, to Nuclear Assault, Dead Kennedys, Exploited, Carcass, all tied to great memories. 

Some might call that nostalgia, but for me, it is something more. I still go to gigs when I can, still buy as many albums as I can, still get excited when I discover something great I never heard before, still thankfully in touch, or back in touch with a lot of the lads from back then, as well as making new friends along the way, travelling for festivals etc. And still nerding out over it, hence being on here. 

And also, I have to say, as someone who has had mental health issues since I was a kid, the music and the lifestyle/subculture has been a lifesaver too.       

[Bürggermeister]

I've mostly had a love/hate relationship with it. I used to love the sense of belonging in my teens the 80's, wearing the uniform, the t-shirt, white boot-runners, bullet belt and bet into the tightest jeans imaginable, getting followed around shops by security all the time and the likes, really part of an underground culture, an us against them vibe. Looked down upon. Back then youth culture really said a lot by the clothes worn, you knew so much about someone just by the t-shirt they wore.

I first shaved off the long hair late 94. I had given up wearing black all the time long before then. The music was moving away from what I loved and I still loved the old stuff, but I couldn't relate to what being a full-on Metaller was turning into in the mid-90's. Black metal said as little to me as nu-metal. I'm very sorry, lads, I hope yiz were sitting down for that. Same with the bands I was playing in, just what Metal was mostly evolving into from the mid 90's said nothing to me.

I grew my hair again, though, and definitely came back more into the overall world of Metal once the miserable 90's ended. I still stay involved with the music, write music, go to gigs, but less so the rest of it.

I went to Keep It True Rising last October. I really enjoyed it but it was also a little weird. So many people rigidly sticking to the uniform. I think I was the only lad not wearing a black t-shirt both nights. I felt quite out of place, visually. It just seemed like an odd thing to try, being almost 50, to look like I did when I was 14. It also felt odd seeing so many kids dressing like a generation from long before theirs. When I was that age we never would have done that. Metal was ours, it was fresh and new. The thought of dressing the same as someone's grandad would have been unthinkable. I struggle with that aspect of the current scene. The music means as much to me as it ever did but I've long since given up trying to look the part. It just isn't me. I take solace in that I've been an awkward cunt since my teens, happy to go my own way, if it didn't feel right to go with the crowd. At the same time, part of me was delighted to be in a room with people for whom the music still meant so much they would travel abroad just to attend a gig, just like I had. I remember the line from Join The Army, "it's the size of your heart, not the length of your hair" and that'll do for me. The music will always be huge a part of my life but, as much as I love metal culture, I've spent a lot of time outside looking in, in many ways.

Semi-false, I think the term is 

[The Wretch]

I first shaved off the long hair late 94. 

...It just seemed like an odd thing to try, being almost 50, to look like I did when I was 14.
Semi-false, I think the term is 

I don't dress exactly like I did back then either. Still wear the shirts and hoodies etc, but I dress more comfortably now, and I have had a skinhead since the 90's, although that was as much about having terrible skin and being too lazy to look after long hair as becoming "mature".

Ultimately, I think the music is the main thing, but even though I'm more sober now (both literally, and in terms of how I look) I'm happy that the lifestyle and subculture still exist, even if there is music I don't get, or as you say, find it weird when I see kids who weren't even born in the 80's or early 90's dressed the same. Although more so when I see them dress exactly the same as some speed metal band from 85, with Japanese flag shirts and spandex. Seeing someone with the aul sleeveless denim jacket with a Maiden patch still makes me smile.   

[hellfire]

I was too kvlt for discos lol. Maybe not, just too socially akward. A trait I carry to this day. I do remember thinking I was the dogs bollocks having little more than a couple of AC/DC cassettes and a Biohazard album, which I loudly proclaimed was the heaviest thing on the planet.

The thought had crossed my mind before as to what life would have been like if I hadn't gotten into metal. I'm pretty sure I'd have stuck with pro wrestling like my friend across the street did. I only really have one other hobby and that's infosec/Linux. The only thing I can be certain of is that any undiscovered hobbies would have been repulsive to the average human female.


Almost all of my day wear is metal shirts and hoodies. Not part of a plan or anything, just clothing stores and sites don't appeal to me. My only clothing purchases by default are band merch. Hundreds of shirts, hoodies and the like but only four pairs of jeans and three pairs of shoes.

I think I was about 23 before I started talking to other attendees at gigs. If it wasn't for a friend of mine (and alcohol) who has since disappeared from the scene I may never have had. Sometimes I miss when Dublin seemed like a world away. When I pine for the good old days I generally think of sitting alone with a cassette deck and really getting into an album. I've gotten so much stuff over the years now that I rarely remember song titles, never mind lyrics.

I wouldn't have ever travelled internationally had there not been the allure of do many bands at festivals that would not have come here. I'll stop typing so there is still something left for my autobiography lol.

[CorkonianHunger]

I'll throw in some two cents here regarding generational changes.

I would say I'm likely on the younger end here, being born in the late 90s. Of course when I was 12 there wasn't social media like it was now. There were elements of 'clout' but most of the young bands I knew still wanted to play gigs.

One of the first bands I was in was a blues/hard rock band. We did covers and originals, busked every Saturday (we made good money for our age) and gigged a lot. We were all under 17 (15 youngest) and gigged in pubs all over the country, generally getting crowds. We even played a wedding at one point. All 4 of us liked different things from Rory, Lizzy or Rush. We'd always try and take the piss playing 12 bar blues by changing things up constantly and challenging ourselves. We even used to self run all age gigs monthly, backline at the expense of our parents giving us lifts.

Reason I'm even relaying this is because these are core memories I have of experience. We didn't see it as cutting our teeth at the time because in a way we were actually doing it all. Yeah there was phones and facebook but it still wasnt to the same extent. Im talking about ten years ago, less. The above post about teenagers in their rooms in front of ring lights doesn't even come close to what we were doing. But as I said, this was not that long ago, so something has definitely changed. Lockdown, tech acceleration, popular music whatever it is. A guitar means something else now. Horseshit music like Polyphia doesn't help either. Young lads now don't want to even be in a band and just progress. The same goes with consuming video games and film. Fiction books are non existent too. (From what I've noticed as I teach secondary school).

Bottom line I find, the majority of young people would rather be quiet and blend in than take the chance. When it comes to metal, often the big names have some skill so entry level can be shit to start off with but you do it anyways.

Anyways, bit of a ramble.

[Eoin McLove]

One thing me and my mates missed out on was having an older mentor. I think by the early 90s all of the 80s metallers, at least in Celbridge, had moved on to other things. We were left to fend for ourselves among the modern 90s stuff and except for a few of the more obvious 80s choices, metal from that era was really passé to us. It took a bit of age and experience to find our way back to that stuff and realise its greatness.

I had a next door neighbor who was around ten years older than me who was a metal head. I hung out with his younger brother and we used to go into his room and marvel at his amazing artwork- he was big into D&D and all that stuff, and would meticulously copy those images. I thought he was a genius at the time. He had a few tapes in his room and the two that stuck in my head purely based on the imagery was Cold Lake and Dreamweaver. Took me a long time to get around to CF and Sabbat, but he was too old to hang out with us and push that stuff on us. We were around 8 years old and our world was GNR and Metallica! Their sister actually recorded Master of Puppets for me back then.

A friend I got to know a few years later had an older brother who was a metaller in the 80s and had posters all over his wall. I particularly remember a painting he had done of Obsessed by Cruelty! Took me many years to get around to Sodom. But he was totally over metal by the time I got to know his bro, but we kind of inherited his Deicide any Obituary tapes so it wasn't a compete loss.

It seemed that by around 92 most people had moved on to rave, hip hop or alternative stuff like Beck and then Oasis etc. It left us younger heads in the lurch a bit.

[Bürggermeister]

Of the lads I hung around with at the time, one of them had a brother who fulfilled that older mentor role. He was great to start off with, introducing us to this huge musical world which existed outside of what we had previously known but, as we latched onto thrash and quickly started devouring every band and bit of info we could uncover, he quickly started to seem like an old man as he listened to his fucking Pretty Maids tapes or whoever. He was only three or four years older 

Thrash was happening in front of us and it was ours, the spandex thing was his generation. Even with those lads I hung around with, once I heard Death, I was instantly drawn that way and when the other Florida stuff started happening, I drifted away from the original gang as it was too heavy for them, whereas I couldn't get enough. I went to quite a few gigs by myself at that time because I wanted to see bands my old mates found too heavy. Since then, most of my friends generally haven't been Metallers at all. I still have mates from old bands who still listen to Metal but I haven't been surrounded by people who live Metal since I was a teenager.

This thread has arrived just as I've been scanning all my old stuff into Discogs and being drawn into memories of those times and more recent times up to now. I can chart my life by the music I bought at the time 

[Pagan Saviour]

"paying their dues" by performing covers in front of a ring-shaped light in their bedroom. It's mental to me. They dress up, give it socks to a camera by themselves and this is where the next generation of players are learning their craft. No life experience, just a strange ring-shaped light which they shake their thing in front of. Fucking mental

Equally as baffling to me. There's no connection, or maybe the it comes in the form of likes and comments but for me it'll never be a substitute for the vibe of the rehearsal room. I'll sound like a cranky old'fella but the videos are a complete cop out, perfect tone, lighting and play away until you get a take you like. Not the same as being bundled onto the stage in Slattery's with no soundcheck and no PA. I do think those crazy live scenarios push you to be a better musician - you develop to a point where you can sound reasonably good no matter what shit is thrown at you.

Or more importantly

Being a musician has changed, the whole scene is so different. You used to be someone who played in shit bands to no-one and gradually worked your way up to decent bands who could draw a crowd.

Work is the key word. Every aspect of it was work, whether it was prepping for a physical release or promoting a show, handing out flyers for gigs or putting up posters around the town. You don't have to leave the house now. I can't compare really but are the lifelong connections we made happening now?

[Bürggermeister]

Ah fuck, I didn't see the other post was put in here too while me and Wretch were writing our life stories. Now it makes sense 

Yeah, just had a moment of clarity while reading the metal news sites yesterday. Yer one, who is now Merciful Fate's bassist, playing along to a couple of their songs in her bedroom passes for news these days. She dresses up, choreographs her moves, and then records a performance of someone else's bassline while alone in her room to the ring light and a camera as if she was rocking the Top Hat back in the day. It's all so fucking empty. Not having a go a her, specifically, it just seems to be a thing for the kids now where performing someone else's music is how you be a musician? It's all so fucking hollow. It's just Stars in Your Eyes on a global level. What have these people got to offer of themselves, what have they been through in life which would make you want to listen to them? What are they learning of themselves pretending to be somebody else?

Like probably most people here, I was in all kinds of shite when I was younger, but I learned so much from it all and improved as a result. Being fucking terrified to stand in front of a room full of strangers but still finding it in you to go out and play, you grow from doing these things. Had humblings from better bands, proper on-stage fist fights, complete audience apathy, bad trips, even had the singer walk off stage and leave the band halfway through a headline gig. All this shit helps you as a human being, though, how to handle the real world, dealing with the sound heads and mad bastards you met along the way. What do you learn pretending to be fucking Rob Trujillo or whoever in your bedroom in front of a ring light?

[astfgyl]

Edit: doubled

[astfgyl]

Great thread that I'll have to come back to because my eyes and mind still aren't working right after the weekend but I could probably describe my own life growing up as a metaller by simply quoting various bits of what's already been said here. I'm getting nostalgic reading how it went for all the rest of you here. Reminds me of this

(Yt mobile links still not the thing here but the laptop is at least 6 feet away)

Anyhow looking forward to reading more of it

Edit: it appears the links on mobile do work now fair play Hambeast if that's fixed

[DaveG]

I went to Keep It True Rising last October. I really enjoyed it but it was also a little weird. So many people rigidly sticking to the uniform. I think I was the only lad not wearing a black t-shirt both nights. I felt quite out of place, visually. It just seemed like an odd thing to try, being almost 50, to look like I did when I was 14. It also felt odd seeing so many kids dressing like a generation from long before theirs. When I was that age we never would have done that. Metal was ours, it was fresh and new. The thought of dressing the same as someone's grandad would have been unthinkable. I struggle with that aspect of the current scene. The music means as much to me as it ever did but I've long since given up trying to look the part. It just isn't me. I take solace in that I've been an awkward cunt since my teens, happy to go my own way, if it didn't feel right to go with the crowd. At the same time, part of me was delighted to be in a room with people for whom the music still meant so much they would travel abroad just to attend a gig, just like I had. I remember the line from Join The Army, "it's the size of your heart, not the length of your hair" and that'll do for me. The music will always be huge a part of my life but, as much as I love metal culture, I've spent a lot of time outside looking in, in many ways.

This just about nails it; Keep It True etc. is great and I really enjoyed it.  The roomful of young lads dressed in spandex and bootrunners etc. does feel like what I imagine the Teddy Boy revivalists in the 60s were like.

[Eoin McLove]

On the other hand, times have changed and metal isn't new. Maybe these kids are the exception to the rule, who actually feel that being part of a real movement is worthwhile as opposed to being nothing more than an online personality. Just a thought.