I don’t listen to death/black metal anymore. That sort of sucked away the enthusiasm I normally would have had for a concert at IIT; more so for an Opeth concert. It’s nice and all that a prominent Swedish heavy metal band agreed to perform in our city and it’s swell that Opeth plays a pretty decent hybrid of a poor man’s Beethoven and your favourite Norwegian black metal band #22. And I am so glad that so many of you decided to wear that “Opeth” T-Shirt that you bought during one of those sordid weekends in Bangalore.
Everything is so peachy and pear-shaped that it almost breaks my spirit to tell you that the Opeth concert really, really sucked. Forget about the band’s disconnect with the audience, the questionable playlist and the absolutely horrendous crowd behaviour. No, really…I’m willing to look past these fallacies. What really got to me was the way Opeth performed as musicians on stage. I could have so easily mistaken them for your favourite Norwegian black metal band #34. For years I have been reading concert reviews, which spoke in detail about the stunning artistry of their live performances. I even remember reading an article in Metal Hammer that compared Opeth’s live shows to those of Pink Floyd. Instead I got to see a bunch of guys, who dressed like teenagers, looked a bit like CSNY’s obnoxious stepchildren and sounded like your favourite Norwegian black metal band #45.
As for the kids (or adults kidding themselves that a change in attire immediately makes them look five years younger) at the concert, god bless each and every one of you for being completely oblivious to the fact as upper/low middle-class Indians, we are about as heavy metal (it can be used as a verb, you see) as the strands of hair plucked from Willie Nelson’s beard. No matter how unkempt your appearance is or how far you goatee transcends your chin, you are not ‘metal’.
No offence, but you can’t be ‘metal’. You could pretend and perhaps you might even succeed in getting a few guys to believe that bullshit, but deep down inside, you know…you aren’t ‘metal’. Why? It’s like this…because you want that Blackberry that your colleague has…because you pretend to prefer Kill Em All to Black Album just to make sure that your friends think you’re a heavy metal purist …because most of the anger that you channel into your music can be solved by spending a few minutes with Oprah Winfrey…mostly because you just listen to metal to escape clichés.
And waving your cellphones in the air to rebel against the fact that lighters were banned in the auditorium is not metal.
It’s beyond lame.
It’s Nokia’s wet dream. It’s that advertisement that Nokia never paid for because even a bunch of corporate suits sipping cafe mocha thought it was a corny idea to ask 3,000 idiots to wave their phones in the air at a heavy metal concert.
My my, you guys are so fucking metal.
