Back in the day, Taake was the black metal band you settled for because all the old bands were no longer recording great stuff and your only other option was bedroom black metal. They were not bad, but had more in common with the melodic heavy metal hybrids that combined death metal with power metal riffing and pretty melodies. That makes it weird in a time where Taake is one of the better options out there.
Taake recently made the headlines because one of their provocative stunts backfired in the new political correctness that is being enforced on us all lest we wayward sheep wander away from the fusion of big corporate power, egalitarian politics, and media zombie fear of missing out triviality culture. Antifa staged a boycott of the band for once posing with a chest swastika, like so:
Apparently this offends some people. Most likely, it was Taake’s attempt to distract from the last time they generated this much attention, which was during the days of the famous “rock out with your cock out” photo:
Somehow no one called them homosexuals, or objected to their pasty white penis privilege. By now you have figured out that this article just trolled you into viewing not one but two penises. Are you sure that you aren’t actually gay? Go on a journey of self-discovery. Don’t worry; I’ll wait. After all, I am just words on your screen.
None of this is particularly new or exciting. Antifa has been boycotting mediocre bands since the dawn of time, when they take a break from vandalism, cashing welfare checks, doing grimy heroin in dingy squats, having yeasty sex with each other without having bathed in the past month, burning down trash cans, and their all-time favorite, randomly assaulting innocent people who might look like Nazis.
A certain metal blog, obviously a self-hating one given its name, published an article entitled “The Problem with Taake Isn’t Just the Swastika Chest Paint Incident.” In it, the writer — who resembles an indie hipster limousine liberal version of Andrew Anglin, primary writer for The Daily Stormer — opines that the problem with Taake is not the chest swastika, but the Islamophobia.
Apparently the frontman for Taake likes to wear a tshirt with the Islamic crescent and star crossed out with a red international banned symbol. They also have some lyrics that talk about war against the Muslims, or at least throwing them out of Norway, and apparently this is offensive to some people.
I suggest a different idea: the problem with metal isn’t just the Taake incident, it’s that the entire genre has lost its fucking balls. This happens when you lose any purpose. Metal last had energy when the Norse black metal explosion re-wrote all the rules and fully developed the art form that Black Sabbath began tinkering with fifty years ago.
Since that time, it has lost any sense of direction. It said its piece, and now is waiting for history to catch up, and in the meantime a fleet of soyboys and neurotics have infiltrated, taken over metal journalism, guided the genre toward their taste, and basically made it an estrogenated version of its former self. Even Taake is too edgy for them.
Metal music has a philosophy, and that philosophy is worship of power and repulsion of human fear. What is powerful? Reality. Violence. Death. Satan (maybe). Terror. Forbidden symbols. Cannibalism. Necromancy. All of these things represent what humans fear, which is that there is someone more competent than they are out there who is going to force us all to be realistic for once. Or just that the world is outside of our control.
In the world of metal, no one sane spends their time mincing around and whining like a protesting hippie that someone said the wrong thing. We either agree, shrug indifferently, or give it the finger and move on. We know that words are not the problem; the total collapse of our civilization, the insanity of just about everyone, the denial and the distraction, those are problems.
We are not here to make everyone agree on some narrow dogma that will lead humanity to Utopia. We know there is no Utopia; as humans conceive it, Utopia — peace, plenty, tolerance, love, pluralism, and acceptance — is not just an illusion, it is total heat death. History is driven by war and outlined in blood. Struggle, suffering, and horror are not just an inevitable part of life, but how nature transacts growth.
That anyone is even seriously entertaining Antifa, a group of people who shit their pants for bragging rights, and worrying about hurt feelings is what is wrong with metal. Man up and get your fucking balls back. Taake said a few things that most everyone thinks at some point, and maybe they’re right. Who cares, because Taake still sucks. And so does the fake metal that “MetalSucks” accurately describes.
Tags: antifa, defecation, feces, islam, metal, MetalSucks, news, shit, sjws, Taake
People with strong stomachs should take a look at Kim Kelly’s Twitter feed to actually understand this article. Total fucking cancer.
She has a penis.
Who bitch this is? There are people who actually care about she thinks?
I heard she was the one who was organizing all those shutdowns. Don’t know if that’s true or not, that’s just something I heard.
She is not unique. There are many on the Left who advance SJW/PC as a means of removing the last masculine, healthy, realistic, and logical aspects of humanity. Leftists are neurotics who want to destroy anything that is not neurotic so that they can make a world safe for neurotics.
I may be being trolled into looking at penis shots (Whatever these are supposed to communicate beyond “looks kinda silly” …) but I’m not going to be trolled into reading more of the kellikimutus kellitus’ writings.
All Leftists are the same in actual thinking; they differ only in degree. On one end are the anarchists and libertarians, in the middle democrats and social democrats, and on the far end Communists. The Left moves further along as it gets more power. The only solution is a zero drop theory of Leftism: exclude it totally, in all forms, hopefully by exiling them all to Mexico and building a giant wall with observation ports so we can see the Venezuealization turn them into sodomitic cannibals.
Mr. Stevens, what is your opinion of someone like Alexander Cockburn?
If you have a strong stomach you should also take a look at Kim Kelly’s hand.
I’m trying to figure out what the solution is here? Specifically a practical one. These recent incidents clearly mean many better bands won’t be able to tour the US as the venues will just be extorted. I suppose there could be secret shows lined up with venues who are known to cooperate and not back down. This could make it hard for bands to break even though so maybe if they really wanted to tour they’d have to be willing to take a financial loss. Maybe the most practical solution is for a shift in “metal culture” with a removal of authoritarian control. This could be done naturally if the “metal community” did not support labels, bands, websites and such that promote shit like this, but so many indie teenyboppers have infiltrated, likely making this extremely difficult. One last solution could be small scale efforts. Bands, labels and websites that won’t take any shit and maintain freedom
Call this out as what it is: Perfectly random art censorship targetting foreigners based on more-or-less specious justifcations. No amount (anonymously) threating US venue operators with “violent countermeasures” (according to a statement released by the band) will prevent a single firebombing of an asylum seeker’s hostel in Germany and the people behind this are certainly intelligent enough to understand this. They’re interested in making a political statement by and for US citizen instrumentalizing whatever they deem suitable for this.
They’re in political opposition to US Christians, hence, denigrating the Christian faith is ok. They consider ‘muslims’ a useful minority group, hence, denigrating Islam is not. The reality is people are perfectly free to do either of both provided they don’t actually interfere with other people’s legitimate activities: Wearing a T-shirt with a “banned crescent” is ok. Storming a mosque and disrupting the service isn’t. This should be a clear case of illegitmately interfering with other people’s right of free expression and the legal loopholes these people are exploiting ought to be closed.
You make very strong points. I’m just curious how these legal loopholes would be closed? Random people are calling in to venues to leave tips on band’s “bad behaviors” of the past. There’s no way someone could take legal action against randomized people simply making phone calls. Venues likely have a line in their booking contracts stating any show can be canceled no matter what, despite them simply failing to do previous research on a band, and deciding if they’re ok to play or not. In the end it’s up to the individual businesses choices if they want to host a band. I also think many of the people that are pushing this agenda aren’t very intelligent. They’ve been brain washed by much more intelligent people to believe they are “fighting the good fight” and that any legitimate criticism of their actions is just someone trying to maintain the hegemony. They really believe it they let a particular band play that violence will actually occur to the community even though metalcucks sponsored the last Taake US tour with no issues arising. The only band that’s had any allegations of physical violence thrown at them recently is from what I’ve read a left leaning band called Young and in the Way.
Decapitated
The obvious idea would be existing (European) anti-discrimination law: Make it illegal to discriminate against people because of their actual or alleged political opinion outside of explicitly political contexts.
It would be unreasonable to expect a society for the promotion of violence against white working-class men to host an event dedicated to germanic mysticism. But a general for-hire venue shouldn’t have this ‘freedom’ anymore than it has the freedom to refuse doing business with people because they’re black.
NB: I don’t think this is a good solution, not the least because ‘modern politics’ tend to corrupt anything touched by it. Ideally, people should exercise the kind of educated restraint a dead German communist (Kurt Tucholsky) I once quoted here in the past advocated: There’s no qualitative difference between left-wingers seeking to censor “undesired artistic expression” and right-wingers seeking to do the same. The means do not justify the end and whoever believes so is an amoral/ honourless character.
Also worth thinking about but meant to be written the other way round.
If Taake had any balls they’d just play fucking house shows so everyone could fucking stomp any antifas that show, and they wouldn’t, and Taake are fags. Also eat it with the “uuhh metal lost its balls uuh” ( say faggiest hipster voice), US metal from the south, Texas to Georgia is on fucking fire now but none of the bands have any label or journalistic support, basically no hype, it exists in a wild true underground where you can die at a show and no one will know about it, check it out some time.
What bands you recommend from those places?
What?! I do want to check out that Southern metal. Where should I start (since I don’t live there)? What styles are they playing?
Antifa is fag.