Bolt Thrower and the Tragedy of Cheetos Metal Punk Rock Boomers...
Why can't old, bitter, punk rock boomers understand they aren't 1) edgy, 2) wanted, 3) even "metal" in the first place. Go back to Woodstock!
I recently received a bunch of angry comments - including some death threats (on the Internet! so tough - the spirit of Phil Anselmo lives on!) which I had to censor - on my post about Napalm Death and nu-metal (read below).
How Grindcore Became Nu-Metal: The Posers of NAPALM DEATH and BOLT THROWER
Napalm Death was once described as Pantera without the virility. Sadly, it’s true.
Out of curiosity, I checked the profiles of the angry commenters. You'd expect people who like to argue on the Internet to be either old boomers who just discovered anonymity or very young and impressionable kids who get off on "breaking taboos" online. Since no one under 35 has ever heard of Barney Greenway and his clown act, I assumed these people belonged to category 1 and I was certainly correct, in more than one way.
They all looked like washed up middle-aged (and I'm being generous with "middle") trend hopping posers, halfway between the punk rockers who never outgrew adolescence and the manchildren of power metal who collect Star Wars figurines (LIMITED EDITION HAN SOLO AND CHEWBACCA!!! PREQUELS SUCK BECAUSE NO PRINCESS LEIA!!!).
Watain and the Problem of "Man-Children" in Extreme Metal
If you were to point to a band that is a perfect encapsulation of every wrong with modern black metal - i.e. clowns dressed up in homo erotic makeup, pretending to partake in “devil rituals” and playing stupid mallcore music - the first band that would come to mind, immediately, is
And while the criticism in my original post was mostly directed at Napalm Death, there is one band that encapsulates everything wrong with the ageing punk rock demographic that somehow manages to be even more juvenile and effete than the babymetal enthusiast... Bolt Thrower (the name itself comes from a Star Wars ripoff).
Post-hardcore pussified metal attempting to be death metal and grindcore and failing miserably, Bolt Thrower "courageously" decided to transition from puberty blocking 80s punk rock to full on Disneyfied mallcore, complete with lyrics that wouldn't feel out of place on a Arch Enemy x Slipknot collab in how they manage to be both effeminate and angsty for no discernible reason.
The band went from a generic Repulsion-clone to annoying Gothenburg metalcore with Pantera "tough guy" chugs. All riffs on Those Once Loyal were stolen from Metallica, Pantera, nu-Slayer, and Slaughter of the Soul but made even more repetitive and poorly used.
Simpalong Gothenburg death 'n' roll. If Arch Enemy is your neighbours annoyingly yappy but occasionally amusing small dog, Bolt Thrower are the flies living and feeding in his dejections.
How Dimmu Borgir's Shagrath Became (Again) the Center of a Black Metal Controversy
Dimmu Borgir is widely known as the band that released one good album in the 1990s - For All Tid - before spending the rest of their career peddling “mallcore” to their undiscerning fans.
At least Angela Gossow and Alissa Whit-Gluz were mildly physically attractive. You could overlook the simping for D-tier musicians on the grounds that they are likely incels who never saw a naked women in real life.
But with Jo Bench and the Bolt Thrower Dorito sponsored trans rights war pigs, do they even have that excuse left?
The worst is perhaps the incessant whining of these failed punk rockstars. They constantly drift between claiming to be "underground" and then "moving on" from metal (having "outgrown" the genre), before crawling back and begging for another chance at relevance once they realise that the only people dumb enough to buy their products - and make no mistake, that is the only thing they care about - are drunk, moronic, aging punk rock incels (like them).
And before you think I'm exaggerating...
"We’re living in a society where war is on our doorstep here in Europe. We have a massive potential global war on our doorstep. We see the neo-fascist, imperialistic maneuvers of Putin in invading a sovereign state of Europe, under the pretext of denazification which is ridiculous. There are more Nazis in Russia than anywhere else on the planet through their nationalistic identity. To see that occurring is horrifying. It’s a frightening subject."
- Karl Willetts (Bolt Thrower vocalist)
This is your "dissident" punker whose rhetoric is indistinguishable from any political pundit on your state sponsored BBC.
"The Death Metal Bible" Book Review
I haven’t posted here for a while - since January, exactly -, and some of you may have been wondering why.Thanks for reading Heavy Metal Girl! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
No one is more paranoid, more decerebrated, more moronic and increasingly more ridiculed than the boomer failed punk rocker.
For all their incessant whining about fighting the system, they are essentially modern day Lotus Eaters with Limp Bizkit's sense of fashion. It wouldn't surprise me the least if in addition to lacking both discernment and musical taste, they also failed the tranny turing test and ended up simping for an Ecuadorian transgender pretending to be Alissa Whit-Gluz (is that where all their pension money goes?) on OF.
You would expect that after decades of posturing against "the corporations" these morons would at least be, if not "smart", then "not retarded" enough to not get double triple vaxxed at the behest of very same “fascist” CEOs they spend their entire lives bitching (ie. writing "social commentary") about.
And yet, when push came to shove, Karl Willetts, Jo Bench and Gavin Ward, who are all known to write lurid Charlie Manson-inspired conspiratorial tales of how they will "overthrow the system" and institute true equality and social justice for refugees and underprivileged minorities, literally played in the Pfizer approved stadium rock supergroup "Metal Against Coronavirus".
From Wikipedia:
Founded by Jordi Creus along with friends Chalo Restrepo and Kike Valderrama, Metal Against Coronavirus is a creative project that called for the participation of the entire international metal community to raise awareness on the dangers of the coronavirus and the need for vaccination. [...] In addition to COVID-19 and fighting online medical disinformation, lyrics deal with issues of anti-fascism, racial injustice, transphobia and police reform.
- Wikipedia, “Metal Against Coronavirus”
Ironic.