Of Manor Mice and Magnolias.
Being a metalhead sucks sometimes. The biggest reason it sucks is you think the world revolves around you and that you're opinion matters the most (which in my case, it does), when the reality is it couldn't be further from the truth. Now I like to think my thoughts are a mixture or reasonability, and unreasonability.
One opinion I hold that I think is very reasonable is that metal should be just as big as any other genre in American pop culture. At various points in time, for reasons correct and incorrect, it was.
Now the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crue, and Iron Maiden certainly never had the cultural currency of a Prince, a Michael Jackson or a Bruce Springsteen, but they were still major players. They headlined arenas, had songs your average Joe Q fuck-face would know, their concerts and music videos would be played on MTV (in its very early days before Viacom and you would hear their names discussed amongst annoyed parents.
Point being, the idea of traditional heavy metal "always being underground," was a crock of shit and a bigger crock of cope. Again, sure the bands didn't have the numbers of a Purple Rain or a Born In The USA, but they were bands of consequence in pop culture. Over the past half a century, it seems the powers that be have done everything in their power to make everything except that type of metal be mainstream. As a result, the "kids" and the underground have been conditioned to think that any form of metal that breaks the armored-glass ceiling has only done so because of behind the scenes puppet-stringing. Hand-waiving the bands mentioned above (and others) as though you weren't allowed to play that type of music and be big past whichever year. After that point you have to do some sort of dumb extreme vocalizing or you get filed away as dad rock. Therefore for the past 30-50 years we've been plagued with diaper shit like Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, Avenged Sevenfold, Spiritbox, Slaughter To Prevail, Babymetal, Lorna Shore, and other various forms of faux-extreme crap that would have had unspeakable things happen to it in small town biker bars back in the 80s, and deservedly so. Even further unfortunate the only way true heirs to the throne such as Sabaton or Ghost breakthrough, is if there is some sort of corny gimmick is attached to it. Spotify masses and tiktok goonbrained industry gatekeepers will not let said traditional bands through these walls (which even a Metallica wouldn't be able to cross through if they were starting today), unless there is some sort of asterisk.
Which brings me to today's subject, Castle Rat. Castle Rat seems to be the latest up and comer act that is riding the next big thing wave (thanks to a melo-death tour of all things). Now I am a Castle Rat fan. Not as much as I am a fan of Lovebites, Crypt Sermon, Frozen Crown, Tower etc., but I am a fan. I think Riley Pinkerton's chain-mail doom metal outfit is pretty much the only "mask gimmick" band thats come along that hasn't sucked furry herpes. But that's sort of the issue. The gimmick, for my money, outweighs the strength of the songs. Riley does have a solid voice (and a better voice than some of the bands I've mentioned above, if I'm being honest), that carries some rather average song constructions. I liked The Bestiary, it did feel like a proper album, I find the songs on Into The Realm more memorable, and even those were a bit average. But I couldn't tell you how any of the songs on The Bestiary go aside from the absolute chaos that is the last half of "Sun Song." Even that kind of goes on for too long.
With that being said, anything that knows anything about 70s and 80s metal is that not everyone comes up with the classics on their first two tries. Look at Accept, Saxon, Deep Purple, hell look at Rocka Rolla. Bands used to be given chances, but because there are so many of them now it's too overwhelming to wait for them to get it right on the third or fourth album. Hell, Scorpions didn't crap out "Rock You Like A Hurricane" until 20 years after they formed! Yeah that's right. Scorpions formed in 64, and their first album didn't even drop until 8 years after that!
The unfortunate combination of having this kind of buzz amongst a fandom conditioned with a terrible mixture of black metal/punk rock-tism, to hate anything with more than 5 fans, combined with all sorts of so called metal elitists who's goals seem to cancel each other out, mean that Castle Rat, and Riley in particular get labelled "plants."
Now, having a critical eye means you try an understand the other side of the argument and be honest over whether the other side has good points. In this case, the argument being that Riley Pinkerton is a plant.
So let's look at the facts that may or may not support this accusation:
- She is the daughter of a very successful, though not necessarily famous, musician, John McCurry. The guy has played with everyone from Alice Cooper, to Joss Stone, to Katy Perry, so the guy has cash and connections. There's no evidence to suggest an estranged relationship, and until this evidence comes to light, it's likely he's helping her with those two Cs. Hell, if she was my daughter I'd help her.
- She bounced around for 10 years trying to make it as a folk musician, only to not find success. There's clips of her all over youtube making local news apperances (including one absolutely fantastic acoustic cover of Black Sabbath's iconic "N.I.B."). Metal fandom tends to look at musicians, especially women, with suspicion if you don't start with visibility in metal. So there is this idea that she "found" metal and is exploiting it, and well, it's the most successful thing she's made so far.
- Since some gooner (God I hate that term) is probably going to bring this up, yes, Riley made an Onlyfans account featuring herself in various states of undress including full frontal nudity, with some pics involving with the Rat Queen costume. No, I'm not going to post any pictures of it or tell you the name of said account. Back in my day our friends had to find porn of our senpais the hard way. Find it yourselves you sorry ass going-to-have-ED-before-you're-old-enough-to-drink gooning fucks. And guess what? So has someone else from one of the bands I've mentioned above. Who cares? This shouldn't be considered a negative. It's fucking metal! Female nudity is supposed to be part of the package. Frankly all of these unloyal ass hoes should have done Playboy and Penthouse.
- Speaking of costumes, it seems like having a costume getup of some sort is the only way for a metal band to get higher than a D list level. Some of the members wear masks, others (including Riley) stick with face paint. For simplicity I'm just going to call it a masked band from this point on. But Castle Rat is a lot farther up the food chain than say, Lovebites.
- Not only are there costumes, there is "lore." Characters come on stage and the Rat Queen has various sword fights with them. It's undeniable that said "lore" is the draw to outsiders more than the music, but are we really gonna pretend that wasn't 90% of the reason KISS blew up in the 70s (the other 10% being Rock & Roll All Nite)?
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