On the Natural Bias of Friendship, Metal Bands, and Access Journalism
The following is the first in a series of editorial posts that tackle topics more personal in nature than MetalSucks’ usual fare. These journals will attempt to bridge my personal experiences with the world of metal while offering a behind-the-scenes look at forces within the industry and a peek behind the curtain of how this website operates. Expect more in the coming weeks and months.
Our friendships define us. Friends always take your side, and you always take theirs. Sometimes friends are all you’ve got.
Who are your real friends? Who do you go to in a time of crisis or weakness? Do they always have your back?
Put another way, who have you been speaking to most frequently — and most intimately — during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Don’t worry, this isn’t another coronavirus think-piece. I started meditating on this concept a few years ago when MetalSucks Podcast host Petar Spajic asked Ihsahn how he justified playing in a band with a known hate-crime murderer. His answer was the best anyone could have possibly given: we, all humans, have different standards for our friends and family.
Of course he forgave Faust! I’d do the same, and so would you, even if you think you wouldn’t. If your own brother, or mother, or child, did something absolutely heinous, would you just cast them off into the unknown forever or would you attempt to reconcile? We always see the best in our friends and family, we believe their stated intentions, we take their claims at face value and we’re quicker to accept their apologies and believe they’ve changed. Ihsahn put it quite succinctly:
“I can understand from an outside point of view, you see a person that committed a crime, and then that’s all you know about a person. If somebody from your family does something like that, that’s just a part of the person you know. We just have to admit to ourselves that we have different parameters for the people close to us than those who are distant. It’s just individual perception.”
Surely you have someone in your life who’s done something horrible: lied, cheated, stolen, betrayed, wronged you in any number of ways. When it’s a close friend or family member, do you ditch them wholesale forever or try and come to a place of understanding and growth? I’m guessing the latter, but if it’s the former you likely live an incredibly lonely life or don’t keep anyone around for very long, because we all have faults. The rewards of a long-term friendship far outweigh your own self-righteousness, I’m certain.
Sure, occasionally in life we must dispense with friends entirely for grave injustices. But those incidents should be few and far between over the course of one’s many years and innumerable friendships. Metal fans may not have forgiven Faust (or a certain other person who tried to commit a murder, unsuccessfully), but it’s important we understand and acknowledge why their families and closest friends did.
In a similar vein as Ihsahn, former Agalloch guitarist Don Anderson recently had the following to say about John Haughm, his former bandmate of 20 years, who got slammed by the media and fans alike for anti-Semitic comments he made on Facebook in 2019:
“Then he made that anti-Semitic comment on Facebook that I, Jason, and Aesop condemned. We still condemn it. But, I think it’s critical that our culture does more than ‘call out’ bad behavior, but tries to call someone in and discuss things like this. The first person I emailed after our statement condemning the comment was John.
“John’s comment accelerated our meeting and we not only talked about the breakup, but we talked about his comment. We discussed the ways it was harmful. I’m not defending him in this regard, but having been close friends with him for over twenty years and this being the first time I had ever seen him say anything anti-Semitic, I felt it necessary to talk with him and reach an understanding. I know John regrets the comment.”
As Don (and Ihsahn) so eloquently stated, forgiving our friends their misdeeds does not equate to condonation.
The concept of strong friendship’s rose-colored glasses extends beyond metal musicians forgiving the misdeeds of their band members, of course; if you’ve ever been through a rough breakup, you know how it works. Your friends say your ex is an asshole, how could they do that you? don’t they know what they’re giving up? Your ex’s friends give them the same exact lines about you. No one’s right and no one’s wrong, that’s just how it is, and your ex’s friends are no longer yours, likely forever. The version of events you share with friends is partial to your side of the story, whether that’s intentional or not (probably not — you believe it in your heart!), while your ex is doing the same. But it’s more than just that: we believe our friends, we trust them, we root for them. We forgive them, see the best in the them, want them to grow. Your real friends always have your back. You’d do the same for them. Doesn’t matter if they are partially at fault, if they were selfish and inconsiderate: you’re there for them! They’re on your team and you’re on theirs. That’s your people, and you stick up for them because you know them, the real them.
Are any of your friends in bands? Bands that, perhaps, aren’t very good, or even just mediocre? Then you know it plays out here, too.
A friend of yours is getting a new band off the ground, maybe they’re alright, possibly even pretty good. But they’ve got some work to do, and that might be putting it nicely. They send you a demo and of course you give them positive encouragement. You go to their show, you cheer them on, you tell them great show! you sounded amazing! Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but as a friend you’re hardly in a position to say; it’s not that you’re lying to your friend’s face — maybe you’re focusing on the good and overlooking the bad, that’s fair — but you’re naturally predisposed to favoring things your friends do. Not only are you choosing to see the best in your friends, but it’s human nature to do so subconsciously. You want them to succeed! You want them to achieve the happiness they’re seeking, reach those personal goals!
Of course it’s not all black and white, friend or non-friend. There’s a continuum that extends from someone who’s a close, trusted confidant to a casual acquaintance, and at every step in between there’s a sliding scale along which these phenomena play out. Your casual acquaintances won’t come to your aid in a time of need, nor would you expect them to. Those acquaintances aren’t the people I’m focusing on today.
The concept of friend favoritism comes into play on MetalSucks, too. Over the years Axl and I have become chummy with certain bands. Astute, dedicated readers of this site may have picked up on it, but most likely not: the way we cover these bands isn’t any different from the way we cover other bands whose music we dig, we’re just more likely to enjoy their music and cover it the same way we cover any band we like. These bands tend to be more or less the same age as us, ones that came up in the same scene and at the same time as we did — we have a shared experience and bonding point — but that’s not always the case, as there are some metal royalty folk we’re pals with, too. We won’t go easy on a band’s new music because we’re afraid of pissing off our friends in those bands — well, maybe a little — but because we know these people, we’re pals, we like their music intrinsically because we like them, we see their vision, we get it. That’s why we’re friends in the first place: something about that bond over the music (or, from their perspective, our take on metal news) is what led to mutual appreciation in the first place. It works the other way, too: they’re predisposed to going to bat for MetalSucks even when others in the scene loudly proclaim we’re hot garbage.
Sometimes I wish that weren’t the case. Could I be a more unbiased critic if I didn’t personally know the folks who made music I have dedicated my career to writing about? Would I be less inclined to give them a pass if we hadn’t shared a whole lot of whiskey and some very personal stories between us? Absolutely. But then I remind myself that a) many of the opportunities afforded this website, and its success, are thanks to personal relationships we’ve built over the years, and b) MetalSucks has always, ALWAYS, been a very personal endeavor for me and Axl, and was intended as an outlet for our unabashedly biased opinions from the literal day we dreamt up the idea to launch it. Point (a) is access journalism for you in a nutshell, and (b) is just us doing things the way we want, same as we have always have. It’s a blessing, but yes, it’s also a problem. But fuck it. This site is what it is. We’ve never made any efforts to hide where our loyalties lie.
The same is true of our relationships with publicists: do our relationships with them impact our coverage? Absolutely, and the same is true for every other metal publication. But that’s a topic to which I’d like to devote an entire separate article in the future.
Who are your friends, your real friends?
Do you trust them?
Do you see the best in them even when others don’t?
Do you back their personal creative endeavors even when others don’t?
Do they stick with you, and do you stick with them, even when they’re at their lowest?
If you changed jobs tomorrow, would you still hang out with them?
Sometimes friends are all we’ve got. The pandemic is a great example of that. Nurture your friendships, and they’ll nurture you right back. Sometimes these relationships are imperfect, or come with consequences or side effects, a reckoning of one’s morals. But if we haven’t got friendships in life, what do we have at all?
