Gays in Metal
Story by Anthony Bartkewicz
decibelmagazine.com
The metal community tosses around the word "gay" more freely than anyone outside of the town of South Park. So what's it like to actually be a
homosexual and be into metal? Decibel talks with openly gay metal musicians and fans to get the not-so-straight story.
CALL TO ARMS
Whether referring to fashioncore, Celtic Frost's Cold Lake (still!), or that guy on a message board who can't handle how fucking brutal the new
Devourment record is, the metal community relies on every possible variation of the words "gay" and "faggot," plus creative bon mots like
"pole-smoker," as go-to signifiers of the weak and un-metal.
The Meatshits called an album Sniper at the Fag Parade; Anal Cunt have practically built an entire novelty career on the parenthetical phrase "(You're
Gay.)" You're not likely to see blackface performers in 2006, but faux-homo bands like Pink Steel and Turbonegro mine gay stereotypes and imagery for
shtick and punchlines. Despite no less a genre pioneer than Rob Halford of Judas Priest coming out in 1998, and aside from the occasional song like
Brutal Truth's "Anti-Homophobe," you'd think metal was some homo-free zone where no one needs to watch their language.
"I have a sense of humor and I'm the most un-PC person you could meet," says Torche frontman Steve Brooks, "but I have respect for those around me and
for myself." Brooks came out in 1992, and spent most of the '90s fronting the sludgecore act Floor before forming Torche. "Obviously, I don't play
this type of music to meet guys, but it's cool to get approached by other gay dudes and girls at shows who know I'm gay. It puts a smile on my face to
know we've got something more in common than the music.
"C'mon, we play in front of a couple hundred people," he says. "There's definitely someone in the crowd who smokes the pole."
BATTLEHYMNS
"I was a nerd as a kid, and I grew up in Hawaii, where white kids tend to get picked on," says former Botch bassist Brian Cook. "So I really
identified with bands like Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion, Minor Threat, and all that old punk stuff that spoke to being proud of one's differences. As I
got a little older I got more into DIY hardcore like Rorschach, Born Against, Undertow, and all the Ebullition Records stuff. I think it really helped
me cope with my orientation; it even made me feel like it was my responsibility to the community to be outspoken about it.
"I was never too involved in the metal scene," Cook admits. "I liked Slayer and Sepultura and all that stuff, but there isn't a real community there.
It's still just performers and spectators without much interaction between the two, so I didn't really identify with those bands."
"I didn't really listen to a lot of music growing up. I was always drawing and creating alternative realities for myself and exploring my
imagination," recalls Otep frontwoman Otep Shamaya. "Once I finally found an interest in music, I didn't seek out music that spoke to a Sapphic
ideology-I was seduced by music that was inclusive to anyone who ever felt outside the conformist paradigm of whatever popular culture considered
'normal.'"
Former Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum (now in Imperial Teen) echoes this sentiment: "I gravitated towards music that pushed buttons, not
necessarily gay-specific musical statements. There were things about Bowie and Sparks and Klaus Nomi that seemed to veer towards a more open
sexuality, but pro-gay messages in rock at the time were pretty sparse. Nonconformity was always important to me, but wasn't always enough. The
heavier nonconformist music at the time that I was around, like Black Flag, Circle Jerks?a lot of the L.A. punk scene, was really macho and, though
different, never spoke to my experiences."
Still, punk rock has had its share of openly gay provocateurs, like the Big Boys' Randy "Biscuit" Turner, the Dicks' Gary Floyd, and Martin
Sorrondeguy of Los Crudos and xLimpwristx, who deliberately, often satirically, confronted or gay stereotypes in their lyrics and performances. The
flamboyant Turner defied any homophobes in his audience by belting out hardcore in a tutu and eye makeup.
In contrast, Brooks says, "For many years, I didn't know of anyone in a heavy band who was gay. They all looked like a bunch of flaming queers, but
weren't at all. The only guys that were vocal about being gay played shitty dance music and I can't relate to that at all. Before Rob Halford came
out, there was Bob Mould [of H?sker D? and Sugar]. He wasn't very vocal about it, but I'm a big fan of his music. It was comforting-one of my favorite
musicians was 'a gay!' Kick ass! In all honesty, I couldn't care less if someone is really out about their sexuality because that's their business.
I'm open about it because a lot of people need to realize that we don't all fit the shitty gay stereotypes."
SECRET OF STEEL
"The sexual orientation of me as a musician was first documented in an Advocate interview I did with Lance Loud," Bottum recalls. "I'd never hid the
fact that I was gay; I think, in retrospect, I was pretty open about it at the time, but when the Advocate article came out, there it was in print. At
the time it was just a little bit taboo but I never felt like anyone tried to play it down or play it up. Faith No More's aesthetic was all over the
map, and I think the fact that the keyboard player was gay played into that nicely. San Francisco was the perfect city for a band like Faith No More.
We were all about pushing buttons-we started as more of an art ensemble and it was our priority to provoke and challenge. We weren't really part of
any heavy music scene up there; it was more like a musical free-for-all, everyone applauding each others' outlandish behavior. Eccentricity was
definitely encouraged and the gay/straight issue wasn't so important. I spent a lot of time downplaying the importance of whether or not I was gay. It
wasn't until later that I embraced the gay image thing and took it on a little more politically."
With mohawked black frontman Doug Pinnick and music that combined metal, progressive rock and power-pop, King's X was something of a tough sell for
Metal Blade Records. Due to the perspective of Pinnick's lyrics, the band soon found itself being aggressively marketed as a Christian band. Then
Pinnick came out, throwing everyone into further confusion.
"I just felt like a hypocrite hiding it, especially in the Christian music scene," Pinnick says. "We never professed to be a Christian band and never
wanted to become associated with ignorance and intolerance. It was something that I just needed to do no matter what the consequences were. The only
thing [Metal Blade] said was that they wished I'd have told them first before I did it. Ty and Jerry said that they were glad it happened, but we
definitely lost a few sales there." Indeed, Christian bookstores returned their King's X titles en masse to the label. "I've said many controversial
things in the media, especially about my dissatisfaction with Christian media and becoming agnostic. They never questioned this, but when I came out,
they freaked."
WARRIORS OF THE WORLD UNITED
"It's not very common, but they're definitely out there" is Brooks' assessment of the visibility of gays in the metal community. Rob Halford tells
Decibel, "I try to keep my eyes and ears open to those types of instances and situations, and it's not that apparent to me in the metal world, which
is what I'm most familiar with." San Francisco resident Christopher Mika, witnessing the city's active queer-punk scene, started the Queer Metal
Militia e-mail list in an attempt to find other gay metalheads. That e-mail list grew into a forum with the domain queermetal.net and about 150
registered users. "I don't know exactly what I expected from the forum, or that I expected it to be busy," says Mika. "I mean, it is the Internet,
that's kind of a drag to spend all your time on, but I figured there should be something, some kind of visible gathering place for queers into metal.
The forum is still the only place I've met any other gay metalheads." Split into two forums, the music discussion forum is more active than the
general forum, with users weighing in on NSBM and "hipster metal" rather than issues in the gay community. "If I'm going to talk about gay stuff, I'd
rather do it in a straight forum because gay people already know what's up," Mika explains.
"I have had more and more people privately confide to me that they are gay and that they're still struggling with letting their friends or family know
due to their fears of being banished for who they are," says Shamaya. "The religious right always reduces the gay community to a deviant 'lifestyle
choice,' which is complete and utter bullshit. Living every day in fear that those you love will stop loving you for who you are is not a choice."
"This tends to be a pretty progressive city," Cook says of his Seattle hometown. "I'm hearing about more and more people in the scene coming out,
which is great, but that seems to be a pretty recent development."
PLEASURE SLAVE
Gay women in the metal scene encounter a double-edged sword: straight men are far more tolerant of (or enthusiastic about) lesbianism than of male
homosexuality, but as hardcore-friendly music journalist (and Decibel contributor) Jeanne Fury notes, "It's still harder for women to get noticed in
the music world. Anyone who says otherwise is deluded."
"Straight men have a much easier acceptance of lesbianism," says Halford. "For a lot of straight men, it's a kick to see two women together, but you
bring the whole story and conditions of gay men into that scenario and the walls go up." Or as Shamaya puts it, "Two hot porn chicks making out
suddenly need a man to join the equation and then BAM! The cable guy arrives to save the day!" She spells it out for the porn fans: "We are attracted
to women, not only sexually, but truly affectionately as well."
"As for men who are more accepting of dykes than of gay men," says Fury, "I think straight men are uncomfortable with gay men because they see
themselves in gay men. (Talk about innuendo!) It's familiar but also incredibly alien, and this combination freaks them out. They can't reconcile the
two, and instead of accepting gays for being gays, they shun homos for not being exactly like themselves. This is the basis for intolerance of all
kinds, and metal has nothing to do with it."
FIGHTING THE WORLD
Years before the Internet gave every metal fan the opportunity to weigh in on what was "gay," Guns 'n' Roses ignited a minor controversy with the song
"One in a Million" and the line "Immigrants and faggots, they make no sense to me." Faith No More, openly gay keyboardist in tow, did major arena
touring in 1992 with G 'n' R and Metallica in front of audiences that, to put it politely, probably weren't really tuned in to gay issues.
"Touring with Guns 'n' Roses seemed ridiculous at the time, but we were all about proving to people who we weren't," Bottum recalls. "We got shit for
it and we loved that."
As for "One in a Million," he says, "I never held the lyric against Guns 'n' Roses and they were nice enough people. We became a little turned off by
what clich?s they became and their fashion, politics, and artistic statements seemed pretty mediocre at the end of the day. I saw some incredible
bouts of debauchery on that tour but nothing that ever floated my boat. It was kind of boring, straight, strippers-in-the-Jacuzzi kind of stuff. We
were all turned off by that vibe but never really judgmental about it. It was just a lack of originality we had a hard time forgiving."
"The most drama I've encountered is from people saying stuff around me like 'that's gay' or 'he's a faggot' and then finding out I'm queer," Cook
reveals. "Those comments have never actually been in the context where they're referring to gay people, but when they find out I'm queer they tend to
get pretty embarrassed by what they've said."
HAIL TO ENGLAND
You can't talk about gays in metal without mentioning Rob Halford, a heavy metal icon and the living embodiment of homoerotic leather-fetish and S&M
imagery-the latter's total gayness escaping many oblivious metal fans throughout the '80s and influencing hetero bands' fashion choices. Cult
documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot, filmed outside a 1986 Maryland Priest show, prominently features a young lady who enthuses about "jumping the
bones" of the voice behind "Hell Bent for Leather" (though it also features a bloated David Lee Roth look-alike who announces, "Rob Halford, I don't
know about you").
Nearly everyone interviewed for this article referred to the Priest singer at some point. "It was pretty amazing watching thousands of screaming
metalheads at Ozzfest 2004 roaring every note of every Judas Priest song without one person screaming any homophobic rhetoric at Rob Halford, who has
been openly gay for years," Shamaya recalls. "In some respects, that gave me hope that the metal community is becoming a bit more inclusive, albeit at
a stalagmite's growth pace." Pinnick puts it more simply: "Gay is not cool in metal, but then there's Rob Halford."
Though Halford rocked leather-daddy gear throughout Judas Priest's career, he didn't officially come out until he'd left Priest and was concentrating
on his industrial project Two. Still, he says, the timing had nothing to do with his distance from traditional metal. "It could just have easily have
been [when I was in] Fight, which was very strong and hardcore; it could have easily happened on the back end of my time with Priest, before I went
away and did my solo projects. It was a very unplanned and unpremeditated moment-I just found the words coming out of my mouth. It was a wonderful
moment for me, a very free moment. When the news broke, it flew around the world, and for some people it was quite a shock. For me, it was an
important thing that I felt I needed to do.
"As far as time is concerned, I absolutely think it would have been more difficult for me to have come out in the '70s or '80s," continues Halford,
with the hindsight of a man who's been a part of heavy metal for almost as long as the genre has existed. "I was aware of the fallout and damage that
could have occurred because of the reaction from some fans and labels and media, but most importantly to my bandmates. One of the biggest obstacles
that gay men face is that we put everyone else first and ourselves second. We're always thinking, 'How is this going to damage my family? How is this
going to damage my work mates? How is this going to damage everything else around me?' If I had been a stronger person back then? I'm much stronger
now, but back then I would have said 'Fuck everyone else. This is me. This is who I am. Accept me or reject me, I don't give a shit.' Again, all of
that thinking has been brought on by all the bigotry and intolerance and hate for us that still exists."
Halford's Priest bandmates knew of his orientation "right from the beginning. It was a non-issue," he says. "I was fortunate because it could've been
different. I think everyone knew that I was not going to go out there and start every performance with 'Hi, I'm Rob Halford the metal god, and I'm a
gay man,' because that was never the feeling for me at that point. There was never any need for it. I never suffered any in-band intolerance or
friction or nasty comments or innuendos or that type of thing. I've certainly experienced it from some of the early tours with other bands and road
crews. I heard it behind my back and I saw it. It didn't affect me. I was like, 'Fuck you then.'
"There are still stereotypes that all gay men are effeminate and weak and queeny," Halford notes. "Of course, nothing could be further from the truth,
which is why I think it's unfortunate that that type of portrayal is still given to the straight general public. In my world, you couldn't have
anything stronger or more masculine and intense. Without inflating myself, I still consider myself to be breaking ground to a level of people within
the metal world. I still think we have a long way to go. It's part of the puritanical streak that exists in America in 2006. Over here in the UK and
other parts of Europe, gays have assimilated into society because that really should be the main goal, if there is a main goal-not labeling people or
orientations of people. We're just people; we're all part of the human race. That would be a wonderful achievement. I still think, in America, there
is a tremendous way to go. One of the ways of chipping away at bigotry and chipping away at all that kind of intolerance is to have some profile,
generally through celebrities.
"I'm not one of these gay guys with a cause," Halford concludes. "I could and sometimes think I should get on my soapbox and start screaming and
yelling, but that's just not part of my personality. I don't do things like that. Quite frankly, I'm not very efficient at it. I think there are more
talented people than me in the gay community who have a stronger voice and a better way of explaining themselves. But we're still surrounded by a lot
of problems."
BLOW YOUR SPEAKERS
Hardcore has risen to increasing prominence in metal, with Ozzfest giving more face time to breakdowns than to Maiden-style trad-metal melodies and
guitar heroics and Ferret Music, once a strictly hardcore and metalcore label, signing In Flames. With hardcore ostensibly coming from a more
politicized and socially conscious punk perspective, are attitudes towards homophobia and acceptance of anti-gay language changing for the better?
"The politics and social awareness in hardcore make everyone involved a bit more accountable for their actions," Cook explains. "It can be a bit
overbearing at times, but I do prefer to be involved with a scene that's 'more than music.' It's probably not as open-minded these days because it's
bogged down with a bunch of kids who were exposed to it via MTV and the Warped Tour as opposed to basement shows and mail-ordering records. A queer
hardcore friend of mine got jumped at a Sworn Enemy show last night. I'm not sure if it was specifically because he was gay, but they were calling him
a faggot as they were beating him up. Hardcore kids are definitely not as enlightened as they like to think they are. Still, I think metal is less
tolerant. Look at the black metal scene-all that fascist imagery would never fly in hardcore."
"The newer, younger hardcore bands are definitely more accepting of homosexuality than their old-school predecessors in that they actually write songs
about it and talk about it in interviews," says Fury. "They grew up during a time in the '90s when sex and gender were discussed more openly and in
creative contexts, as opposed to the '80s when 'gay' meant 'AIDS.' The minute Kurt Cobain put a dress on, it encouraged all these kids to at least
think about gender roles and realize gender doesn't have to be one or the other. As a result, the younger bands are more likely to have
out-of-the-closet friends, and hardcore has always been about loyalty and support."
Despite the tough-guy image many 'core bands project, Fury notes that, "because the newer hardcore bands are speaking out about queer tolerance, it
forces the older bands that are still in the scene to revisit the topic. The political climate and the war are big focal points in hardcore right now,
as opposed to a bunch of 'I'll break your face, you fucking coward liar motherfucker' songs. The old-schoolers have this tough-guy legacy on their
shoulders, but if they want to continue to have an impact on the scene, they'll have to connect with their newer fans by appealing to what's on these
kids' minds."
"Another issue I have with metal is that long hair looks really awful on guys," says Cook. "I definitely prefer the straightedge, shaved-head jock
types. Then again, I do like the fat-dude-with-a-big-beard-and-tattoos look too. Kerry King is totally hot. He'd probably kick my ass for saying
that."
Dude, that's gay.clevohardcore - 8-17-2006 at 09:52 AM
This could be someones thesis for Graduation of Metal Academythedog - 8-17-2006 at 11:43 AM
defstarsteve - 8-17-2006 at 12:35 PM
sweaty shirtless men rubbing up against each other all night long
yup metal and hardcore are gay
so what?
I don't care who anyone fucks as a consenting adult why should anyone else.Voodoobillyman - 8-17-2006 at 12:36 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by defstarsteve
sweaty shirtless men rubbing up against each other all night long
yup metal and hardcore are gay
so what?
I don't care who anyone fucks as a consenting adult why should anyone else.
