Alone at the Metal Show
Photo : Angela Dimock (518 scene)
I hadn’t been to a show for a couple years until I started going again.
My involvement with Vox & Hops Review Crew was probably the motivating factor that got me going again. Matt has this unassuming, but sincere way of inviting you somewhere that is very difficult to say no to. "I put you on the guest list for Clutch" he told me via Facebook DMs without me ever asking to do it. "It would be great to see you there." That was it. Come hang out with us or don’t come at all. We'll have fun either way, but it’d be great if you were there.
So I did.
But something interesting happened a couple weeks later. I started going on my own. First one was Harakiri for the Sky and Ghost Bath four weeks later. Tickets were under twenty dollars and I was on my own, that weekend. It’ll be exactly one year tomorrow, May 18th. Going to a show is a social activity. You're in the middle of a sweaty crowd for an entire evening, you run the risk of meeting someone you know (extreme music is a small community everywhere you go) and profound conversation is almost impossible.
Shows are a social activity, but you’re alone out there in many ways. Ironically enough, it's a lot like going to church or what going to church should be like according to Christians. It's a social event but the most important things happening are meant to happen inside of you. It's one of the great unscientific things still happening in our society and you never quite realize it until you go to a metal show alone. You're connecting with something greater than yourself that elevates you above whatever weighs you down.
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I'm 41 years old and people have asked me all my life what do I find appealing in ear-scraping music. I always tell this people the same exact thing: it sort of chooses you. Extreme music is uncompromising and intuitive, it exists to fulfill a need before it exists to make money. There's a market for metal, grindcore, noise and whatever unholy audio abominations you can conceptualize because it provides people like me a soothing feeling that is immediate. Because I needed to hear what I felt outside of myself.
Something can be extremely painful and because it is lodged in a wordless part of your psyche, your can’t express nor share it. It is often wound-based, but not always. Some people just burn a little hotter than others. I know it's sounds sexy when worded like this, but fire can also be consuming. It can make you reckless and self-destructive. When you find a context where you can burn without hurting anyone (including yourself), it feels like you're going what you’re supposed to do. It feels like home.
When that primordial, wordless pain is expressed and echoed, it stops belonging only to you. It's just a thing that exists in the world and it feels immediately great. It’s also a constant reminder that you can pry it out of you and shape it into something and that feels empowering. It can exist and it can be beautiful. It can also help others and make you feel less alone. That’s why I like to tell people that metal is a way of being. You can find and mine that wordless pain all the time if you know where to look.
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So why the fuck would anyone attend a metal show alone? For the same reason that you would with a legion of friends: to exorcise the demon on your shoulder. Everyone who attends a metal show does it for the same exact reason. To have a release from the tension of being different in their everyday life. It's a congregation of people seeking the same thing: belonging. As it is with a church, you don't need to know everyone in order to feel welcome, you just need to understand and appreciate why you're there.
But you already belong if you're there. You're present because you've been called to something most people would not attend even if they were paid to. Even better, you enjoy it. Everything feels right when you’re there. When the music plays sound swallows the room you're standing in and everyone in it, you're exactly where you're supposed to be. That’s why I go to shows alone now. I made plenty of friends who also are regular since, but the essence of the connection a metal show creates is invisible and inwards.
I go to shows alone, but I never feel alone there.
