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Midnight Express

Do remember the movie "Midnight Express"? If you do then you will also remember the scene where the main character Billy Hayes walks in the opposite direction that all the inmates tend to follow in the jail's courtyard. This powerful scene pictures the character's struggle to stick to his guns and eventually avoiding being digested by the rest of the crowd. So, now that you remembered about the movie let me explain its connection to the Heavy Metal music; or should I say community?

The main characteristic of this community is its ability to host all those persons that were considered as outcasts to the rest of the normal society. The bands started writing music that was not following the 70s "happiness" and "joy" but were dealing with things like war, unpleasant feelings that were expressing in a realistic way the human psychology. Additionally, the Heavy Metal community was accepting all the characters as they were, regardless of their clothing and general social status. The artists could express themselves in every possible way that sometimes was outrageous for the "normal" people and sometimes was really aggressive fueled by the hatred against all kind of discriminations. The years passed and more music genres were born under the Metal label that for some strange reason (I think it's one of human's nature) started splitting the metalheads in different usually opposing camps.

So, the Thrash guys were fighting against Glam guys or the Epic Metal fans and so on. This led to another and finally the Metal scene lost the connection to its roots where discriminations had no place. During the mid 80s some of us were having second thoughts of wearing our favorite Metal t-shirt outside our house fearing the older in age fans who were considering themselves as more loyal fans than the others.

The years passed by and the Metal scene was "adopting" more bad habits on the way; the music itself was connected to extreme socialism, to religion or anti-religion, to war or anti-war, to politics and the list goes on and on. So, what happen to this community that could accept you as you were and could give you a way to express yourself? I really don't know but I find it genuine silly to see metalheads fighting over these subjects. Things got deeper and you could find people rejecting albums before even listening to them due to the accompanying music label. Suddenly, a new race was born; the music critics or simple the album reviewers. These guys think that they know everything regarding the music scene and thus are able to criticize the album by giving them grades. Before the giant growth of the internet we had he magazines where the reviewers where giving their "words of wisdom" praising some albums or "burring" others. Eventually, the Metal community started creating trends and actually following them.

What happened? Why the metal scene is acting like the ones we hated ? Why were famous mottoes like "It's all about the music" forgotten? Personally, I believe that in some point we have forgotten how Heavy Metal music was born and that all these labels were created in the shake of describing the music in words and nothing more. So, forget all these genres and focus on the music itself, start respecting the people who spend endless hours in the studio to get an album together that will possibly give the potential to perform live. Stop downloading music, get additional attention to the Underground scene by attending gigs with fresh bands, go ahead and talk to them afterwards or share your thoughts and a beer with the rest of the metalheads.

The last 10 years and maybe more the know-it-all fans (or the old-timers) say that "Heavy Metal music is dying;" this cannot be true because we are the Metal music and not the bands! If we are still keeping the Heavy Metal mentality alive and safely guarded away from stereotypes that try to walk the other way around like Billy did in "Midnight Express" then there are more years in front of us. Start looking the album reviews from the informative perspective and that is whether are elements that make it interesting to you then go ahead and check the band in the internet and why not buy one of their albums. Remember it's all about the music and nothing more! If the music is expressing your feelings or ideas or mood then it's just perfect.

Posted by Dr Satan on 4/20/2008 at 23:26

Food For Thought

Imagine a book. A very big and old book with hundreds of thousands of pages. In there lies the story of all mankind since the beginning of time. As we look at the present page and take a glimpse at the next, the blank space seems to be constantly written and it won’t stop, until the end of time and therefore the conclusion of history.

We as readers have the mixed privilege to take a glance and even in a few cases participate in a couple of pages. Some of us are brought in a position to even change the writing of this book and affect the flow of whole chapters. And I said ‘change’ although I seriously consider the possibility of us being mere ink vessels that spill their essence onto the carved letter pages.

Now we readers follow a time sequence and can realize the truth of the pages that are closely related to our existence. In other words, I as an individual understand the facts that I have witnessed throughout the years of my life. What I have witnessed are facts, but all the others are simply evidence, either strong or just rumors. I see with my own eyes and therefore I have facts, I realize the existence of material outcomes of previous generations and therefore I have evidence and I hear and in cases read about the course of concluded actions and therefore I have rumors.

We have memories of evidence and rumors in our minds, but we don’t have facts about the detailed course of history because we weren’t able to read the book from the beginning. We have missed content table, the few words about the author, the prologue, the first chapters. And as being placed to read the book after skipping all that, it can only make us imagine what happened, learn about outcomes and hear the scientific opinion and therefore the opinion of the majority and as a result assume that that’s how it must have happened. The actual truth is vague, the assumptions are very strong and the not-really-knowing confusion continues unquestioned in an every day basis. All of our intellectual relief is in the hands of the book Keeper, the one that through our desperation and our unanswered questions has to exist and reveal one day His wisdom even in the silliest writing mistakes and typo errors.

Until that day one thing is for sure and is our strongest asset: Hope.
Hope that we know, hope that we can change, hope that we will understand something. Hope that blurs our fundamentally flawed existence and polishes the idea of a perfect human being, of a perfect life, of a perfect world. Hope. A curse or a blessing? A gift of the book Keeper that makes us continue walking our paths or the food of the bookworm that forces us to go on and on for thousands of pages without any meaning?

We have no actual idea of how we ended up here, of what we are doing or what we should do, but still our living is filled with annoying prerequisites that throw us off course and overwhelm our short lives with anxiety and a constant need for vanity fulfillment. There is no footnote on the book on how to avoid this, there is only a huge paragraph that tells you that you have to deal with it and if you don’t, it tells you that your name will pass in History as the one of a sad outsider and if you are really lucky or even clever, it will be written as the one that belonged to a rebel.
For the vast majority that deals with it, little questions are programmed to pop every day in their mind like ‘are you beautiful?’ ‘are you economically independent?’ ‘do you have a successful career?’ ‘seriously now, do you really have everything you want in your life?’ and stuff like that. From the number of ‘yes’ that we will answer to questions like that lies our happiness. And since in the book no one so far answered ‘yes’ to all and managed to get away with this without earning some terminal sickness and as a result ruin the value of the previous, we are caught in pursuing the impossible. Like mice that believe they can eat the whole cheese and won’t get caught in the trap. Or hope…

The truth is that we are totally clueless of what are we doing on this world. The author, or book Keeper or God or whatever, decided to put us on stage to perform as capable actors, without knowing the story of the play and without even one rehearsal, we’ll do lots and lots of mistakes but we won’t be able to fix almost all of them, we are aware that eventually there will be a grand finale and we wait for it, hoping that the play we are on is not a drama or a thriller…

In my more optimistic moments, those that come early in the morning after a good night sleep and have next to nothing chances of survival, I keep telling to myself that there is a reason for all that. That I haven’t been randomly born in this society at this specific time frame and that one day all my confusion we finally be put aside and I’ll understand everything. That what I see may be reality but seems wrong and what I feel makes more sense and brings me closer to the truth. My eyes may show facts, but still blur my feelings and deceive me, it’s my heart I should follow, that tells me that the book has a backup in all human souls, that we haven’t lost the meaning, we just need to look closer and that hope is a good thing that won’t let us forget the greatness of humanity.

And then the tired of routine mind starts thinking…

Posted by Hellina on 3/26/2008 at 13:57