Shameful Otaku Secret!

Sure, I’m an anime fan. But that apparently came as a surprise to some people who knew me, hence the name of my site. One thing that won’t come as a surprise to anyone in “RL”/meatspace/whatever you call this fleshy prison is that I’m a giant music person. I think I have three shelves of anime DVDs (formerly known as “the Gainax section”) but literal rooms full of records and CDs, as well as terabytes devoted to what used to be more CDs and records, freed from their round plastic confines like something out of Lain.

When I first started my music series, I didn’t get a whole ton of response. In fact, the response was pretty much a record low for the blog. But I suppose it was my fault.

The mission statement for this series, written in Esperanto but roughly translating to introduce weaboos to music they wouldn’t normally listen to and almost certainly still won’t is admittedly a bold first step on the bright and shining road to failure. Starting the series with icons of Japanese salaryman-hardcore Gauze didn’t help my case.

would you buy a car from these guys?

But recent forays into the last.fm accounts of fellow anibloggers (like OGT, Martin, and TheBigN) has made me want to revive a little J-music blogging. Reason being, I can scrobble all day long with nothing but Japanese tunes and never intersect with any other anibloggers. I admit, there’s not a lot of actual J-Pop in my collection and I don’t expect everyone to just jump on board with “uber cult band” G.I.S.M. (see above lols) and other classic but probably fringe Japanese bands, but there’s gotta be something amidst gigabytes of mp3s and hundreds of slices of vinyl that you people will not only try but love. So the mission will continue. Also, I could use an excuse to rattle on about Merzbow or Susumu Hirasawa.

Kawamori’s Mona Lisa

I had never thought too much about Do You Remember Love? until watching it this year. It’s been falsely accused of wrongly altering the story or just plain being a standard movie-compression. Really, it’s presented as a work of historical fiction that exists in-universe for Macross. It portrays Minmay with heroism but little sympathy and Hikaru as kind of an asshole, but it gives Roy Fokker a death in battle, so overall it’s a mixed bag. But two things come to mind: Firstly, the animation is one of the crowning achievements of pre-computer anime. And second, there’s that dramatic set piece: Minmay sings “Ai Oboete Imasuka” as the world is turned on end and the human race changes forever.

Perhaps Mona Lisa’s a bad term; after all, Da Vinci only painted that once. Kawamori, however, is a more obsessive artist who tends to try over and over to get the same piece right. Trouble is, he did it once, and modern technology (especially in the hands of the oft-underwhelming Satelite) can’t make it any better than it is right here. The song, the battle, the scope, the majesty of the whole scene will suck you right in. It’s the moment for which Macross exists.

When television or movies takes on a particularly underground art form and tells a story about it, there’s one hell of a risk of getting everything wrong, or just plain looking stupid. That’s even worse when the art is as obsessed with authenticity as underground metal music. Metal has always in desperate fear of “poseurs,” and of the idea that anything with a hint of mainstream acceptance is the mark of “falsehood.” So it would seem that Detroit Metal City is a risky undertaking for its creators. That’s why I’ve taken it upon myself to validate — or invalidate — the pig-fucking antics of Krauser, the President, and all their evil cohorts. To rape your misconceptions, if you will.

What makes metal “true?”

Don’t fucking ask me. I think one of the greatest ironies in heavy metal is its ultimate desire to be “true,” since the very notion of claiming to be “true” can either (a) launch you to immortality or (b) totally invalidate your authenticity. Nowhere is this more the case than with black metal, the subgenre spawned in the sleepy frozen towns of Norway where some kids took a couple of silly old Venom records too seriously. Norway’s most (in)famous metal ambassador, Mayhem, even places “The True” over their logo.

The Look

Black Metal is a good place to start where Krauser is concerned. While DMC is touted as a “death metal” band, they seem to surround themselves with all the trappings of a black metal one. There’s the black and white “corpse paint” makeup (which was inspired by ’80s metaller King Diamond’s KISS-meets-Satan look and adopted by almost all black metal bands in the 90s); the medieval armor probably inspired by Emperor (although no doubt with a little of Gwar’s goofiness in there too); and the bondage look of the Pig that some of the modern black metal bands favor. Does it look good? Well, let’s just say Krauser does, because Camus’s Insane Clown Posse look is not quite up to snuff. And some bands are getting away from the theatrics in an effort to be more “true” — but to really capture black metal’s golden blackest years of the mid-90s, corpse paint and spiked armor is a must.

I opened up the gatefold to Mayhem’s debut Deathcrush, and the credits — especially bassist Necrobutcher, credited with “4 string Crushfuck” — made me smile and think of Krauser.

The Lyrics

Heavy metal has long been a media and parental target due to their fear of its supposedly satanic lyrics, and when death metal surfaced in the 80s, its proponents saught to make that fear a reality. Things stayed largely Satan-and-Lovecraft for a while. But British group Carcass got the gore-ball rolling in 1985 by opening up medical textbooks, closing their eyes, and pointing to random autopsy-related words. When American group Cannibal Corpse hit the scene a few years later, they took that gore to such a nonsensical extreme that squares tended to ban their albums and some metal fans actually found them to be too cartoony. Sound familiar? DMC and their music are shunned all over the place for their lyrics, and let’s face it — they are cartoons. Sounds like a match to me.

Let’s put DMC’s hit single, Satsugai:

Yesterday I raped my mom

Today I’ll carve up my dad

I don’t have friends or lovers

Because I killed them all

up against Cannibal Corpse’s classic ditty, “Hammer Smashed Face”:

There’s something inside me

It’s coming out

I feel like killing you

Let loose the anger, held back too long

My blood runs cold

Whatever connections Krauser’s lyrics have to reality, they’re meant to be both a parody and an homage, but not a strict representation. DMC is more like the embodiment of the parental fears that created death metal lyrics in the first place. You could argue that the Japanese tend to take things, especially music, to a crazed extreme (something probably gets lost in translation), so you could say that DMC is technically a possibility. Whichever way you see it, DMC’s lyrics are a fine reflection of death metal reality, and no less silly than some real ones. Score another point for Krauser. In thanks, he’ll rape you.

Satsugai

During Norwegian black metal’s peak of popularity, the mainstream media and audience knew very little about its actual sound. But they were well aware of the antics of its musicians. Accounts vary, but there are two pretty crazy defining moments in the scene:

• Mayhem’s second (and some say best) singer, Dead, a really depressed kid by any stretch of the imagination, shot himself in the face while propped up in bed. His suicide note? “Sorry about the mess.” Guitarist Euronymous scraped up some of the bits of his brain and put them into a soup.
• The original Norwegian scene ended with the murder of Euronymous by former friend and mastermind of the one-man band Burzum, Varg Vikernes aka Count Grishnak. He claims Euronymous was going to kill him, but he also claims Euronymous was a pussy, and besides, he’s a certifiable madman and a neo-nazi to boot. Whether it was over money, who was the bigger poseur, or some other petty nonsense, Vikernes stabbed Euronymous a few times in the back as he was running away.

Add to that a slew of assorted church burnings and a couple other murders, and Scandinavia in the 1990s seems like just the kind of place you could rape a tambourine and not seem like such a bad guy. Krauser would really have to step up his game, and I’m guessing he’d relish it.

The Verdict

Metal, as much as I love it, can be cartoony at times. Like anime, it’s an acquired and somewhat nerdy taste with a lot of trappings that go along with it. You have to willingly and purposefully suspend disbelief to a degree, as well as accept and even love things that regular people find creepy, perverted, or just plain stupid. So to be honest, metal and anime go together better than you think, and if you can find a better ambassador to bridge the two worlds than the mighty Krauser-san, I hereby order you to present him to me. Or at least his head on a stake.