Metal radio show host Viktor Palak talks to the LGBT+ heavy metal podcast about being out in metal, and queer life in the Czech Republic. While She Sleeps provide a Camp Classic themed about finding mental resilience. And HCGBs gets entries from Blanket and Wilderun.
Viktor Palak, host of Modeláři [in Czech], a radio show in the Czech Republic that specialises in metal (and related genres), chats to Hell Bent For Metal about his experience of being out in metal.
He tells Tom how metal has more points of affirmation than we might acknowledge, both from the obvious role models, and from some of the actions of the bands, and about how the welcome he feels from the various scenes he moves between (metal, punk and hardcore) aren’t necessarily the way you’d expect.
Viktor speaks about how he views queer life in his home country, and especially how that affects LGBT+ musicians in the metal scene, and their decisions on how open they are about their identity or sexuality. He also talks about how this affected his own choices in this area.
This week’s Camp Classic is “Seven Hills” by British metalcore band While She Sleeps. And while the song’s meanings might be immediately and specifically clear, being very obviously mostly about the band’s relationship with their fans, and their Sheffield home, that doesn’t stop there being plenty of room to identify queer relevance in Loz Taylor’s lyrics.
Matt, to whom this song has huge significance, has some long-standing interpretations arising from the struggles he was going through when he first heard the song a decade ago, as well as some others that he’s taken from it more recently, now he’s at a very different stage of his queer journey. In particular, he sees some clear parallels with his experience in both the areas of solidarity, and of the importance of finding mental resilience within yourself.
Tom, naturally, manages to go straight for a much less deep-and-meaningful, more adult interpretation, skipping straight past the profund, and into the profane. But he does at least manage to find something a little more weighty to talk about in the literal interpretation of the song’s chorus, and how it makes him think about the changes a band experiences as they move from a new band to an established one.
In this week’s visit to the Hate Crew Gaybar, one host picks one of release he wishes he’d put in the jukebox in 2021 (what with it being only 11 days into 2022, and 2021 having been bonkers for great music), and the other host chooses the first 2022 release to go into the jukebox.
—The 2021 entry is ‘Modern Escapism’ by Blanket, the ambient, Deftones-y troupe from Blackpool, England, who Matt’s slightly nervous about bringing up. And the 2022 addition is ‘Epigone’ by Boston, Massachusetts progressive, symphonic epic metallers Wilderun, who Tom has done a dramatic volte-face on.
Content Warning: This episode includes (very, very) bad Yorkshire accents.
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