DEATH METAL CAT BURGLAR GIVES HEADBANGERS A BAD NAME

Image courtesy of Metal Injection

You guys have been e-mailing us about this one for days, but in case you somehow didn’t hear, here’s the gist of it, via Metal Insider:

Heard of NYC death metal band Divine Infamy? You will soon. Their vocalist, Purgatory (or Shanna Spalding), has just been arrested for several robberies, one of which was done while she was wearing a cat mask. She was arrested in Manhattan yesterday after walking into a store in SoHo with a gun and demanding cash while wearing a burqa as a disguise.

This is obviously more press than Divine Infamy have ever gotten before, but I’m not including a link to their webpage — they’re easy enough to find if you’re so inclined. But this is the kind of shit that only fortifies metal’s terrible reputation as the music of idiots and degenerates (which is one of the reasons I was so hesitant to even write about it in the first place… an overwhelming number of reader e-mails ultimate swayed me). There’s obviously no actual connection between the poor life decisions of Ms. Spalding and her music of choice, but every conservative nitwit in the world will say otherwise — I mean, Tipper Gore probably read this story in the newspaper and thought, “I told you so!”

I hope some greedy asshole at a record label doesn’t sign this band and try to sell Spalding’s arrest record as a proud badge of how “tr00” and “street” this Divine Infamy are. Her behavior obviously isn’t as bad as burning down a church or murdering a bandmate, but it’s definitely not commendable, either.

-AR