#Christopher Willits - Pentagonal

[darkarfs]

I need to learn to love how I look post-shower. Fucking rained-on St. Bernard. (That's a Drumstick, which I got from my neighbor's freezer. I'm watching her cat this week while she's on vacation, and she said I could have a few.) I'd never been to a show at a college campus before. It was a 4,000 seat venue and it was almost completely full. And the crowd was exactly what you'd expect at that kind of show: the Venn diagram meeting place between anime nerds, stoners and metal nerds. We got there for opener Jason Richardson, a guy who did shred instrumentals with programmed blastbeats. Every song was indistinguishable from the other. He went on for too long. Totally admit going in that I only knew 5 or 6 Babymetal songs, but the ones I knew I more or less liked. I'm not a person who sees them as a novelty act, either, like "oh isn't that interesting, these Japanese pop-idol singers are fronting this riff-heavy metal band." The songs and performances speak for themselves, honestly, and the enthusiasm and energy are absolutely there. They choreograph the shit out of it, and they take it seriously, and yet...it's objectively very silly, and I like that. There's a video vignette at the start about how the infinite universe needs more love and free will and heavy metal in it, and these people want to bring it to us. There's footage of ruins, the desert, the world as seen from space, the Ouroboros, animals chasing one another. It dissolves into this vague "the universe at play, the cosmic ballet" sort of thing, and I take solace in the fact that metal never lets go of that imagery, ever. It shouldn't. Pretend metal is the music of the universe loving and strangling itself, always, because it really is, and I always wanna lose myself in that mess. They didn't do "KARATE," my favorite song of theirs. But they were giving 100% of themselves, and I admire commitment, even if I only knew 5 or 6 songs. Dethklok are currently Brendon Small, a tiny woman in spandex whose name I missed (I think it was Nili?), a bass player, and drumming legend "Atomic Clock" Gene Hoglan. And they are...listen, I've been going to metal shows since 1997, since my freshman year of high school. I've seen Cannibal Corpse, Opeth, Sepultura, Between the Buried and Me, Megadeth, Mastodon, Gojira, Slayer...these are maybe the tightest metal band I have ever seen play. And I think that has everything to do with the fact that they have to play to match the visuals on a giant screen behind them, and it was millisecond-precise, airtight. They're basically playing note-perfect live versions of every Dethklok music video you've ever seen, in real time. You'd need Gene Hoglan for that. FaceBones addressed us twice on the monitor, reminding us to stop being such dickfaces for not showering when going to shows and that we're all friends because we smoke weed. Smalls also took the time to address us as every character he voices on the show. He could do Pickles and Skwisgar, but his Nathan suffered because he had just sung 7 songs beforehand. Not blaming him for that! This is probably the only show I'd ever been to where I knew the words to EVERY song, too, which is weird to think about. Like, even when I saw bands I loved like Motorhead or Gwar, there's always a song I don't know, or a deep cut they do that I'm not familiar with. I knew all the Dethklok stuff.

So much fun. Good to be among the enthusiastic metal dorks, universally the best and most accepting crowds on Earth. Did a shirt count, and other than the two bands performing, the most represented band that I saw, weirdly, was Megadeth. Shout-out to the girl dressed as Dr. Rockso. People being let out to get back to their cars looked like the opening to Gravity's Rainbow. On our way back to the car, I overhear this conversation: Guy behind me: "Those visuals on those two songs were from the movie that just came out." Other guy: "Oh, there's a movie? Where can I watch it?" Me, turning around: "KIMCARTOON DOT ELL-EYE!" GBM: "Well, I'd like to pay them to watch it, yeah?" Me: "Oh, well, in that case, you can rent it on iTunes." Other guy: "Oh, well, fuck that, I'm not going through all of that." Me: "Y'all can't have it both ways, dudes!" An incredibly fun and lovely evening. Glad I did it, glad I had good company for it. I'd do it again.