A Living Hell
by Kerry Joyce
illustrations by Eric Johnson
If I hear one more born-again poser trying to tell me about how cool Christian Industrial Death Metal is, I’m going to nail somebody’s living carcass to a tree.
These corporate tools think they can make a big impression by telling me how cool some band like Tongue-Talker or The Snake Handlers is. I don’t even want to waste my breath telling such idiots that those bands don’t even play true Christian Industrial Death Metal. It’s just warmed over Christian Punk Goth. Herod’s Daughter isn’t so much a band as it is a growling dance troupe. The whole Christian Industrial Death Metal scene has been taken over by a bunch of trend-sitting, (yes, sitting), cash-hungry pop papists. There hasn’t been a single Christian Industrial Death Metal CD released in almost two years worthy of the title.
I can remember when there were hardly any Christian Industrial DM fans at all, and just one decent band, Last Supper. I saw them one time when there were only 18 people in the crowd, and 12 of those were members of the back-up band. They were quickly joined by Road To Damascus, The Constantines, The Inquisitioners, and eventually, The Lutherans, but that was much later, and by then most of the creative energy had already been spent.
The very same people who now let on about being such big fans of CIDM were, not so long ago, the anti-social misfits who threw rocks at me and my friends at the bus stop in high school because we listened to groups like The Matthew Peter Band. That was when being a CIDM fan meant never getting to spend your own lunch money. Invariably, some Mötley Crüe dirt ball would take it from you so he could score a pack of cigarettes.
One time, when the circus came to town, these Johnny-Come-Latelies threw my friend Daniel into the lions’ cage. They thought it was real funny until one of the lions took a swipe at the side of Daniel’s head and tore off one of his ears. It took three EMT’s four hours, and about seventy pounds of ground beef, just to get the ear back, but by then it was too late. I believe in turning the other cheek as much as the next God Rocker, but to this day, this good friend of mine usually wears contact lenses because regular eyeglasses just slide off his head, and I think just getting grounded for a month was getting off easy.
Anyway, the whole scene was really underground back then. Literally. We used to hide out in these concrete overflow pipes behind the strip mall that were part of the city sewer system. It was known as the catacombs. We used to really blast away songs like “I Got Jesus Going On,” “I’m Just a Hapless Fool for Jesus,” and the stellar, if somewhat repetitive, “Jesus Jesus Jesus.” You just don’t know what reverb is until you’ve listened to “Wine In My Water,” from a boom box on high, inside a six-foot diameter cement pipe. It was really cool, unless it started raining. Then you had to rush out of there fast or your CD-player would gum up, and you’d get shit all over your pants. Talk about sludgy. Ugh. That used to get my Mom real sore. But like Paul Detarsis of The Galatians would say at the start of every concert, “All who live godly in Christian Industrial Death Metal will suffer persecution.”
But being trapped in a six-foot diameter shit storm, and getting hollered at by my Mom, is nothing compared to watching Christian Industrial Death Metal fall prey to the mainstreaming influences of the money-grubbing record industry. What’s worse is having to listen to a bunch of fools bleat about a scene they don’t even understand, like the herd of sheep that they are.
