TEGAN & SARA GO METAL?

No, not really… but you’d think so based on the Canadian pop duo’s new “metal” t-shirt design (above).

Part of me wants to like this t-shirt because it looks cool. Kudos to the designer for that. But the other part of me wants to say, “Man, fuck that.” The co-opting of metal culture, particularly the aesthetic, is not something that metalheads take lightly. I’m no member of the fashion police, but I think it’s fair to say that any Tegan & Sara fan wearing this shirt would be doing so ironically; “Haha, it’s Tegan & Sara but it *looks* metal. Get it?” That irony is a slap in the face to those of us who take metal seriously. I can’t speak for Tegan & Sara themselves — for all I know they could be cranking Gojira at 11 as I type this — but the likelihood of most of their fans being able to name one Metallica song outside of “Enter Sandman” (if that), let alone the name of one metal band new on the scene in the past 10 years that didn’t play at Bonnaroo, Coachella or <insert hipster festival here> is pretty damn unlikely. And something about that makes it seem rather unfair of them to bite off a hunk of metal culture for their own good.

Full disclosure: I loved Tegan & Sara’s 2004 mini-hit “Walking With a Ghost.” Fantastic song. But metal it is not.

So let’s keep apples to apples. Look; if one Tegan & Sara fan picks up a Carcass record because of this shirt, then mission accomplished. But it still rubs me the wrong way. What do you all think?

-VN