On this week’s show, “#35 – Wake Up Gay”, Chris Harms from Lord Of The Lost is the LGBT+ heavy metal podcast’s first straight cis male guest, and ‘Wake Up Dead’ by Megadeth’s risqué homosexual interpretation is revealed. Plus At The Gates and Year Of No Light albums go in the jukebox.
Chris, the industrial metallers’ frontman, may not be from the LGBT+ community himself, but when he’s a vocal ally, and is talking about gender nonconformity and how he realised he was definitely straight by giving homosexuality a try, him being on Hell Bent For Metal turns out to make a lot of sense.
Tom and Chris discuss the Lord Of The Lost’s ideology, and why the are so keen to stand with the queer community and to speak up for LGBT+ rights, and how this is affected by the band’s frequent visits to countries where the fight for LGBT+ rights is not as far along as it is in their native Germany.
They also cover Chris’ and the band’s attitude to their own gender and sexuality, and how that relates to their presentation – it being very definitely not your typical appearance for heterosexual cisgender men, even within heavy music.
Chris tells of his time working in the gay bars of Hamburg’s St. Pauli red light district, and how this lead to his experimentation with his own sexuality. He also reminisces on the radically unfortunate name of the man he experimented with.
Tom also tries to find out how much of Chris’ conviction in supporting the LGBT+ community is rooted in a political or ideological motivation, and how much is down to his personal connection to members of that community over his life – given that one of the recurring themes on the pod is how powerful knowing queer people can be in changing minds.
In this week’s Camp Classic, Matt and Tom reveal the queer way they read “Wake Up Dead” by Megadeth, then give that interpretation a thorough seeing-to.
The hosts explain why Dave Mustaine may have accidentally written a song about the experiences of a closeted gay man in the 1980s, and what this has to do with Tom growing up in the era when supposedly-heterosexual, apparently-happily-marries British politicians frequently had to resign having been caught in a compromising situation with a man. There’s also some serious love for ‘Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying’, because obviously there is, and a recollection of an old celebrity ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’ episode.
Plus the albums for the Hate Crew Gaybar jukebox this week are ‘The Nightmare Of Being’, the latest record from Gothenburg melodeath legends At The Gates, and ‘Consolamentum’ by French post-metal instrumentalists Year Of No Light. (Even if the latter does have an album cover that looks rather like something Tom is very definitely not an expert in.)
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