The Gray brothers themselves have a few thoughts to share as well-most of them about death metal, and their band Snot Goblin (which is quite promising-think mid-period Carcass mixed with Nunslaughter and goofy teenage humor). Despite reactionaries’ panicked baying that the moves the genre’s made towards social progress is in fact a plot to make metal “less dangerous,” the fact of the matter is that, to most people, heavy metal and its fans are still seen as taboo, scary, weird-and, as was unfortunately made apparent last week with the Gray brothers-dangerous.
#Deathmetal thomas skin
While this particular combination of brown skin and black T-shirts proved to be too much for one mouthy bigot to stomach, it’s not altogether uncommon for the latter to raise eyebrows-or hackles-here in America. Our family is shocked and saddened over this incident of racial profiling, and disappointed that the school didn't take a proactive stand in protecting my boys from being shamed in this hostile way." The boys’ mother, Lorraine Kahneratokwas Gray, spoke to NPR’s Northern Colorado affiliate KUNC after the event, saying, "I was concerned for my sons' safety and advised them to return home immediately. The university apologized profusely to the teens and has offered to reimburse them for the trip and bring them back as VIP guests the teens’ family has not said whether or not they plan to accept. They clammed up in response to her questions, which seems like a reasonable reaction when a strange adult is trying to interrogate you about your intentions on a college tour.
They arrived to the tour a little late-it had been a long drive, after all-and quickly found themselves being questioned by the mother of one of their fellow attendees. The brothers, who are members of the Mohawk Nation, are both metalheads, and happened to be wearing black band T-shirts that day Lloyd sported a Cattle Decapitation shirt, while Thomas wore an Archspire hoodie. They’d saved up for months to make the trip, and had chosen the school due to its proximity to Denver, which is known for its burgeoning heavy metal community and strong live music scene. In real life, metalheads seldom make the news for nice reasons two of the most prominent images of metal fans to hit our current news cycle were both utterly contemptible-the video of a scrawny white neo-Nazi in a Slayer shirt sucker-punching a woman at Charlottesville’s deadly “Unite the Right” rally, and the recent malicious felony assault conviction of Jacob Goodwin, a white supremacist who brutally assaulted a black man named DeAndre Harris there that same weekend and who can be seen proudly wearing a Suffocation shirt on his social media profile.Įarlier this month, two young Native American men-Thomas Kanewakeron Gray, 19, and Lloyd Skanahwati Gray, 17-left their home in Santa Cruz, New Mexico and drove seven hours to tour the campus of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado.
We’re generally the butt of the joke anytime we pop up, from Airheads and Empire Records to Beavis and Butt-Head and the loving but still over-the-top homage that was Metalocalypse. Mainstream public perception of heavy metal culture is still stuck in a sort of cultural hangover thanks to this bitter cocktail of societal influences, which is garnished by a lack of positive portrayals in mainstream film and pop culture. The spirit of the 80s-era Satanic Panic lives, and its impact continues to reverberate throughout the annals of modern history one can draw a straight line between the PMRC’s fear-mongering to the media’s portrayal of the Marilyn Manson-loving, black-clad Columbine shooters to this most recent incident. The social stigma surrounding a long-haired person in a black T-shirt, long hair, and leather jacket remains, even as high fashion and streetwear companies continually mine the metal aesthetic for fun and profit. It’s also gotten us in a lot of trouble over the years. That combative attitude towards the mainstream is as intrinsic to metal culture as long hair or sweet guitar solos or a fascination with evil, and that enduring pique has resulted in some of our most cherished pieces of art, from Metallica’s …And Justice for All to Napalm Death’s Scum to Castrator’s No Victim.
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