JUMPING DARKNESS PARADE: DAATH’S EYAL LEVI URGES AMERICAN BANDS TO STOP WEARING CORPSE PAINT
Am I the only one here that thinks that American bands shouldn’t be allowed to wear corpse paint? There should be a law in the metal books that states it. There’s some rules that us American metalheads must follow, like the famous “Don’t Wear Your Own Band’s Shirt Law,” for instance. It doesn’t apply to Europeans and that’s okay, they’ve got their own set of laws. It applies to us, though, and when you break it, people get to talking.
Well, I think that corpse paint should fall under the “Must Never Be Applied To The Face Of An American” law. I think it should be punishable by excommunication from the community. I’ve got my reasons.
Do you guys understand what corpse paint represents? It’s part of a political and nationalistic agenda that we have no say or part in. I know that there’s a million different styles of black metal, but what I’m referring to is the genre that was spawned as rebellion against the Christian invaders. See, back a long time ago in Scandinavia, the Christians invaded and crushed the native people’s Pagan cultures with maximum brutality. The corpse paint is a symbolic war paint to accompany music which is essentially nationalistic rebellion music aimed at pushing out the Christian invaders.
Now explain to me how an American band can justify wearing that look with any reality behind it? You going to push the Christians out of your nice suburban neighborhood? Get over it. You’re not Scandinavian, you don’t have pagan roots, and the only thing you need to push out is your parents from your bedroom so you can jerk off to your dad’s Victoria’s Secret catalog.
In DAATH-land, any time we play with an American corpse paint band, we call them The Peter Criss Band. We like to sit in the van and videotape them getting out of their mom’s station wagon and putting on their makeup in the rear view mirror. It’s so cute. For a style which is supposed to be cold, evil, bleak, and raw, you guys aren’t doing a very good job at representing. I suggest you ditch the act and write some dark music that actually represents something you might understand.
It’s possible for American bands to have a black sound and still be real. Goatwhore is a perfect example. They don’t wear corpse paint by the way. And they don’t consider themselves black metal. But in my opinion, they are the closest thing to a true American black metal band. The music is evil, the intent is real, and it comes from an honest place. If they were to dress like panda bears and try to sound like Emperor, then it wouldn’t work. But they sound like where they come from. Dark, Sludgy, blackened death metalish Satan rock. And it’s real. And it has just as much attitude as when I see a true black metal band like Watain.
The point is that Goatwhore keep it real, and that’s why the respect is there. You guys should all keep it real. Corpse paint is just makeup unless you have the roots and the lineage to back it up. American’s wearing it is about as bad as Belgian gangster rap.
-EL
Eyal and the other members of Daath are too pretty to be obscured by corpse paint. Why don’t you visit them on MySpace?
