Listening to Slayer’s Reign In Blood and Seasons In The Abyss albums recently (these are the only albums I have by the group that I really like [1]), I boarded a familiar train of thought: I like this music, occasionally. But how do people only listen to this stuff? Or, from the creative rather than consumptive angle, how could anyone be content to only do fast, loud, intense, aggressive, dark, and so on?
Back in my teens, as a sheltered child, emerging from the cosseted protection of a Christian upbringing of sorts, my first encounters with horror and violence in the world of entertainment media kind of traumatised me. I saw a run of films that were pretty dark and violent, as far I could make out at the time, like Taxi Driver, Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart, and suchlike.
Now, many years later, having jettisoned the faith of our fathers, and listening to less ‘evil’ rock/metal than I once did, I occasionally find myself drawn almost hypnotically back towards the ‘dark side’.
It’s happened very occasionally before, as when I read a book on Charles Manson, in my early twenties. But usually it’s just a momentary impulse that passes as quickly as it arose. Another little blip a few years back lead me to buy a bunch of those Day of the Dead and Evil Dead movies.
These movies were kind of okay. But they weren’t very scary at all. Indeed, they were more preposterous than frightening. And supernatural horror? Forget it. The premise is so pathetic that everything that follows is so much hokum. To me, at any rate.
Was I getting like a drug addict, searching for progressively harder highs? Perhaps. I moved on to such films as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. My first attempt to watch it failed, as I did indeed find it rather scary. But a second and complete viewing made me realise it wasn’t at all as gory as it’s often cracked up to be. So, better, but still mostly very silly.
It wasn’t until I saw Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer, that, at last, I felt I’d hit pay dirt. This was finally a movie about disturbing ideas and behaviour that was both believable and, in places, genuinely disturbing. Once again, a second viewing made me realise that it’s largely less extreme than the fuss made at the time it came out suggested.
That said, there are several scenes, such as the home invasion massacre, and the dissolution of the murderous protagonists partnership, which remain pretty hard to watch.
One thing that’s very striking is how far the whole culture has gradually shifted. So far that when Tarantino has Vincent Vega accidentally blow Marvin’s head off, as the hitmen drive away from their ‘job’ in Pulp Fiction, it gets a hearty if horrified laugh (even from my Mrs, only yesterday, no less!).
More recently still, I bought Abel Ferrara’s Driller Killer, which is in the same violently ruptured artery as Henry, in many ways. And during the same period I started to seek out and watch both YouTube docs and full length features on serial killers, preferably real world ones.
I’m still in the grip of this most recent interest. So whereas before I’d get interested and then move on. At present the interest is what I’d call an abiding one. And it’s even drawn me back to investigating all that dark/black metal type stuff…
NOTES:
[1] I also have their debut, Show No Mercy. The trouble with that one is the awful thin, tinny production. If it were redone, it’d probably be ok. I’d like to get South of Heaven, as I did hear it back in the day, and quite liked it. But it wasn’t as enjoyable as the blast of fetid air that was Reign In Blood.
[2] Not a group, or even a genre (grindcore?) I’ve listened to. Just here as a visual example of the crossover ‘twixt extreme violence/gore and extreme metal.
[3] … than the music actually delivered. The music was more in keeping with this image:
