The time The Dillinger Escape Plan released a shirt for an LGBTQ charity is celebrated on this week’s episode of the LGBT+ heavy metal podcast, while Powerwolf’s “Alive Of Undead” is found to have loads of queer relevance. This week’s HCGB visit includes the hosts’ top 20 albums of 2021, plus jukebox entries from Violet Cold and Stormkeep.
On their latest show, Hell Bent For Metal celebrates the time The Dillinger Escape Plan marked same-sex marriage becoming legal in the USA by releasing a shirt for The Trevor Project, which is a charity that aims to prevent suicide amongst LGBTQ youth.
While it was hardly a surprise that TDEP would be supportive of the LGBT+ community, as the hosts point out, there are degrees of support, and releasing a product that makes money for a charity that literally keeps young queer people from dying is high up on that scale. So it’s of no surprise that this is one act that both hosts took to heart.
They are also quick to point out that some things are bigger than music, and that it’s entirely possible to have respect for and value a band and what they do, irrespective of your opinion on their music. Although admittedly, for a band like TDEP, who were absolutely adored by so many people, that seems unlikely to be a difficulty for most folks.
As promised last episode, this week’s Camp Classic comes from one of the hosts’ top 20 albums of the year list. And while it’s not the one they originally had planned (that one would take ages, apparently, so is now going to be a special episode), it took all of 10 seconds to find another easy choice: Powerwolf’s fiendish ballad “Alive Or Undead”.
It might seem an obvious choice, given the song itself is camper than a row of tents in Bloomingdales at Christmas. But that’s not actually the angle the hosts approach it from – or, rather, one of the angles. It turns out both Tom and Matt find different interpretations of their own that, while they might not have spotted each other’s angle beforehand, they both agree on them immediately.
Topics for discussion here include how queer folk are here and impossible to avoid, how the LGBT+ community is stronger standing together, and the ways in which LGBT-phobic bigotry causes psychological harm. Also one of the most outrageous euphemisms the show’s every featured. Which sounds impossible, but was apparently no challenge at all.
Plus this week’s visit to the Hate Crew Gaybar sees the hosts run (concisely) through their top 20 albums of the year, then enter one album each from those top 20 releases each to the jukebox. The first of those albums is ‘Empire Of Love’ by pod favourites Violet Cold, the “AI simulated music” one-man project from Azerbaijan that includes basically every genre of music ever. And the second is ‘Tales Of Othertime’, the debut album by US melodic symphonic black metal band Stormkeep, who have a hypetrain going full steam ahead in the underground.
And if you want to hear a more detailed dive into the hosts’ top 20s, Knotfest Premium members can hear that in an extended HBFM special, coming later this week.
Listen to Hell Bent For Metal on Spotify here, listen on iTunes here, or choose one of the other ways to listen here.
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