girlfriend metal

So I filled in for a friend's metal show last night for the first time (I've done fillins for the stoner rock slot and, given the inherently eclectic nature, I'm the go-to for the African music slot too) and while the tuneage is substantially heavier than what I play early in the morning because I'm actually awake, it's definitely not the usual bill of fare either.

I'm not so much into the blastbeats and growls as I am the melancholy infinite sadness with crushing power chords and such. In fairness, I got a few decent requests and no complaints and of course the "I didn't know you were into this stuff" because I got in under the trip-hop world umbrella and now that I'm established have moved back to more familiar territory, which is rooted in the flannel love I had as a teenager that led me down the rabbit holes of stoner rock, shoegaze, old punk, and big riffs of all kinds and then to even more weirdness further on. Someone requests Black Mountain and someone else asks for Porcupine Tree and someone else asks for some Finnish band that had a lot of chanting, and one drunk guy called at the last minute and wanted Karma To Burn, barring that, a booty call. Keep it classy.

 
 There's grindcore on tomorrow night and being a radio listener, I know it's easy to change the station or switch over to the CD player and I'm more interested in having a good flow of tunes than exerting the cred I don't have by playing bands I don't care about.

A few people call in or stop by while I'm surrounded by stacks of CDs and records and they say "oh it's way more mellow than what he plays" and I joke about it being two hours of "girlfriend metal" which I've heard bandied about but never quite realized was a 'a thing" or just assumed it was some kind of Hot Topic mallcore derision, rather than a description of a sound that has a bit more melodicism, the occasional hook, and maybe a bit of clean singing.

Somehow this is sissy because it doesn't involve ample amounts of Freaking Out Your Parents or sacrificing virgins to Satan or whatever. Being a fundie, that's not really my lyrical bent anyway. I'm probably somewhat guilty of the whole inevitable sexism thing here too, because I snark about this kind of thing all the time as to why Opeth no longer rocks as hard as they used to, because I'm self-deprecating by nature and it's hard to take this hairsplitting seriously as it is.  

Every so often, the other ladies who dig heavier tuneage get frustrated on the Internets with the occasional neanderthal tendencies of their male hesher counterparts who tend to deride them for only being into it to get dudes or to humor them or because they theoretically swing the other way or whatever. In conversation with Randal yesterday, I theorized that people tend to sound really dumb on the Internet and if that's how one gauges any subgroup, it tends to paint a bad and not very nuanced picture, because most of the time the only representation tends to be ignorant losers with big mouths and a lot of issues (oh snap, yours truly!), and it's easy to assume or assign monolithic tendencies to feminists and wingnuts and headbangers if one doesn't know such folks in real life.

Chicks, man. But hey, Mike Patton and Pete Steele were standard fare for weirdo Parmastani females of a certain age raised on our parents' Sabbath and Zeppelin records. Sue me, I like stuff I can sing along to in the car even if I sound a bit absurd. Listen to the tunes below that comprised last night's playlist and judge, kids.