Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Sports



A few weeks ago, Brenocide posted a Violation about Mixed Martial Arts. As an avid sports fan and one who has come to appreciate MMA, I thought desperately of how I could rebuke such an attack on something that at its core should be 100% pure metal. The answer my friends, is that he is absolutely right and I will take it the next step further to say that all sports are not metal.

Competition, the struggle for victory, the pummeling of your opponent: all of these are perfectly fine and metal in their nature, but when taken into a sports context, they lose their metalness right then and there.

Football, hockey, and baseball – which are perhaps the three most common sports that a metalhead would enjoy – should stay as far from a show or the stage as possible. Does it matter if your favorite band wears sports apparel on stage or that they make Facebook posts supporting their favorite team in a playoff series? Absolutely not.

If you need any evidence, think back to high school. Who were the biggest sports fans and participants of organized athletics? Probably not you. You had long hair and ragged clothes and if you had muscles, you used them to pound the shit out of poseurs in the pit and in the hallways. Inevitably, because you had no affinity for seeing your classmates naked or having one of them inject you in your ass, you were not one of them, even if you enjoyed laying a vicious hit on a defenseless wide receiver. Ultimately, you could never have their back because you were never one of them, which is the biggest rule of organized sports. Your brothers were pummeling each other to Kreator, not rubbing their members on one another to G-Unit, cruising the streets in their lifted Jeep Wranglers with their collas popped, searching for mad hotties.

There has been many an athlete attempting to bring metal into sports and musician to bring sports into metal. These are all failures in upholding the values of each and keeping each pure and true. There have been guitar playing Red Sox players who loved playing Metallica songs, Slayer wearing Oakland Raiders jerseys on stage, and countless others. When individuals do this, they make their product suffer. Athletes have more of a following than a metal band, thus infiltrating the metal band with a following of the false who think they are Bruce Lee and wear kimonos.

These guys don't belong anywhere near my shows.
Over a decade ago, a metal-loving freestyle motocross rider and his fellow competitor and friend formed a group and clothing line named after a classic metal song, which has now come to epitomize everything that is to be avoided in sports and metal: the Metal Mulisha.

Sweet bikes and tats, bro.
These two started as an extreme group of riders who happened to enjoy heavy music and had an affinity for attempting and landing some of the most jaw-dropping tricks in the sport. Obviously, this drew them recognition, so they created an apparel line. Now they host shows and have taken their venture into the MMA arena. Because of their success and appeal to a vastly different market, they break the metal rules. Supporting anything hardcore is not metal, competing in an organized sport is not metal, MMA is not metal; therefore, the Metal Mulisha fails at being both metal and a mulisha, whatever that is.


Some of you are going to inevitably argue, “Slayer wears Raiders jerseys and Slayer is metal, so anything Slayer does is metal.” Trip and bust your skull open on your dresser, dumbass. Using that argument is on the same grounds as telling a girl, “it’s not rape because I love you.” If Slayer auto-tuned Reign in Blood and used a drum machine instead of Dave Lombardo, would you still say that’s metal? Just because a band does something does not mean it happens to be metal. No one is immune from making a violation. Metallica, Pantera, Amon Amarth, Korpiklaani, and Slayer! They have all made violations from dreadlocks to jerseys to making pure suck for two decades.

Slayer is officially a violation, assholes.
If you are a metalhead and a sports fan, you have only one path for true metal redemption: live a double life. You cannot bring one into the other. They are separate entities and must remain as such. The sports fan in you can only reveal itself in a sports venue or on the field, course, court, or ice. You must be careful not to reveal your colors in the wrong context, or else you risk being shunned by both communities. I know the difficulties living a double life entails. It may not be easy, but it is the only way to keep sports and metal true. You want Bruce Lee in the pit as much as I do in much the same manner Roger Federer wants to share the court with Johan Hegg.

24 comments:

  1. I don't really see what you're going for to be honest...you're all over the place.
    People or organizations that are not metal cannot do things that are not metal, because someone or something has to be metal in the first place to perform violations. As Brenocide, I believe, wrote, Slayer and Metallica stopped being metal a long time ago. Their positive contribution to metal is far outweighed at this point by their shitty music and bad publicity, touring with shitty bands etc. I agree with that reasoning. So it doesn't really make sense to talk about metal mullisha doing unmetal stuff...of COURSE they are doing unmetal stuff, they are a bunch of jocks on bikes, if they think that's a good way to spend a life then clearly we have a difference in philosophy.

    People that read this blog on a regular basis are probably more intelligent or observant than average because this really is a very niche sort of humor to understand. Those who simply feel and know what is metal rather than having to weigh things out for too long and consider all aspects and buts and ifs are the ones that really get this blog, and so it doesn't really follow that you treat the readers like we are all a bunch of bloodthirsty retarded slayer fans. You're pretty much missing the point here.

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  2. Awesome post. I find sports are both not metal and not heterosexual.

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  3. The point is to show those who happen to enjoy sports and metal that combining both is not a possibility. While it may be obvious to you and me, there are plenty who don't know. I have seen plenty of people wearing sports apparel at shows and have heard athletes perform heavy songs, so it is clearly my duty to make sure everyone is on the same page.

    I use that Slayer argument because I see that more often than you think, on both this site and on their Facebook page. If you have never seen that argument , or one similar, you cleary have not been around here long.

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  4. To argue my point would be a waste of time....So I will just say that it sounds to me that someone didn't get any HUGS after getting beat up by the JOCKS at school. METAL was and is about rising up not giving a SHIT about whats in your way and going for it and SPORTS are the same. To say that you can't be both at the same time is obtuse. The SLAYER arguments don't stand either...SLAYER can wear and like whatever they want if not for them we would all be forced to listen to RAP or COUNTRY. And to OH-OKAY...if you have ever been in a pit it is exactly like a SPORT....athletic-violent-fun.

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  5. Don't even both with anonymous, he's a fucking retard. He's too dumb to even choose a name.

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  6. And ellipses... is NOT... a ... replacement... for every... other...FORM... of... punctu..A..TION

    English was clearly not your first language. Make it your last and kill yourself.

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  7. Ok, now it makes sense. You're one of those fans of metal that thinks anyone and any band can do what they want because at least it's not country or pop. I hope the plunger handle goes in too deep in your moment of intimacy.

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  8. the swedish metalhead4/28/2011 1:54 PM

    Good post, i completley agree with the last part (the rest of the article too, for that matter), the both have to be kept apart. I'm one of those guys that live a "double life" cause i can almost get the same adrenalin rush on the field (am. football mostly) as in the pit (note the word almost).

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  9. Funny enough I'm gonna make a post on my own blog about shirts you see at every metal show, and sports related shirts or jerseys was gonna be pretty high up on that list. Usually those are the people you have to watch out for. Hockey fans are crowd killers, take note, and stay away.

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  10. One of my favorite posts. I hate the whole sport/jock worship in this country. It represents everything I hate: being a team player (which translates into being a good little worker bee in a job you hate)winning at all costs is fine, how taxpayers have footing the bill for these stupid stadiums all in the name of job creation (nevermind that the jobs are shitty paying McJobs) how often players get away with crime, how fucking all Mom Baseball Apple Pie it all is. FUCK SPORTS. (Ok, I do love womens Roller Derby, horse racing and I watch UFC to check out the men.)

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  11. Brenocide: "English was clearly not your first language. Make it your last and kill yourself."

    BHAHAAHABBBAHHAAAAAAAAAA!! I love you. Have my abortions!

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  12. Of course i already know this, only adds to the fail that is Shadows Fall with dreads and black Celtics jerseys.........i have a Dodger bottle opener in my keychain but it's usually out of sight.

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  13. I don't think sports are completley unmetal as you say, and weaing jerseys and sport t-shirts shouldn't matter, but it's true that they can't be truly combined-

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  14. Great article! I'm thinking about the song "Athletic Rock" by Raven. LULZ
    The only sports that I would EVER consider allowing into metal are Demolition Derbies or perhaps in the future, Rollerball.

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  16. definitely NOT metal to agree with much of anything you wrote in this article. sorry, you are going to get the crossed arms again. poseur.

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  17. Steve Harries has a West Ham United badge on his bass, and often wears a football shirt on stage, and it works.

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    Replies
    1. Don't take these articles too seriously, sometimes its all bullshit or humor that no one really gets. A true footballer (association football, not the NFL crap) can be more metal than any geek that writes posts here.

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  18. What if you listen to metal while lifting for sports?

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  19. Arms crossed at the idea of mixing metal and sports. Great article. And that's coming from a huge sports fan.
    And MMA is a joke, more than half of the time is spent hugging your opponent instead of beating the shit out of them.

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  20. But how about american football? Or association football? Yes that football. You pummel yourself against each other, and when not bounded by rules, they are pretty metal. Sure, the fags that play in pro football get hurt by just getting touched, and that's not metal, but try playing it with your friends and it's like being in a damn pit. My point is, sports can be metal, and if you still don't think so, there are at least sports that are more metal than others, or are you going to tell that both rugby and tennis are in the same level of unmetalness?

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  21. Just saw a few baseball caps at a show........and one of them was "Angels".....at a show with black metal being played, wtf? Hipsters are invading!

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  22. Two words to prove you're wrong: Dark Angel.

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  23. So much is wrong with this post. I actually had hopes that this website was going to be interesting, but its full of crap like this. Some stuff is correct of course, but its not completely METAL. Keep arguing online...

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All readers that post under the name "Anonymous" and are too frail and weak to represent themselves properly with a title, shall be deemed false metal poseurs for the remainder of their pitiful existence.