I talked a little about music before, but I'd like to talk about some of my thoughts on metal, since I spent Sunday at a metal festival that happens here in Columbus every year.

I grew up in a house that celebrated prog rock. Pink Floyd and the Who were played constantly once my family got a CD player in the early 90s. My Dad got me into the Doors and my Mom got me into Fleetwood Mac. I myself fell into the zeitgeist of 90's alt growing up.

But around the beginning of high school I started hanging with the metal heads. I got into Metallica, System of a Down, and a bunch of others that my friend Jeff was into. I met him the day I first cut class, so it rather all felt like delinquent music.

I'd heard of Metallica, obviously. I really liked characters in media who were metal heads, like Bill and Ted, Wayne and Garth. My Dad enjoyed some classic metal like Iron Maiden, but didn't much care for Ozzy.

Ah yes, Ozzy. Now he would get airtime on the radio a lot in those days. I got really into him.

One of the friendgroups I was in back then we called the Four Kings of Edison. We had around seven members. There was the original four, which was me, my dear friend the psychotic Ed (who named us), the epic Corey the blue haired whackjob, and Dean the smarmy jackass. We didn't get along as well as we could have.

Other members included Steph, my girlfriend and a friend to us all, Anthony who Ed and Dean despised, and Caveman who would come and go. I guess Sam was around after Ed and I had moved away, but I don't think he ever was formally a part of the Four Kings.

Now we were all brought together by two things. A love for subverting authority, and metal. It was the only thing we all had in common. We went up on Corey's roof one night blasting Howl at the Moon and the cops showed up and weren't interested in busting a bunch of kids having fun, even if it was the ghetto and even if we weren't that white.

So Ed gives me a CD, it's Hellbilly Deluxe (1998) from Rob Zombie, and to say it rewired my brain is an understatement. I'd always been into creepy and macabre things, and some bad experiences in the 7th grade had made me wary to publicly indulge in those interests, and I loved this album. I ran a bunch of DnD games with just Steph all set to Hellbilly Deluxe, all centered around horrible monsters and ruined locales.

A little while later, Ed gifts me Sehnsucht (1997) from Rammstein. I'd heard of them from Jeff but hadn't listened to them at all. One day, the Four Kings took our bikes out to the edge of town across an old unused swing bridge over the canal. It was just endless farmland as far as we could see. I sat on the warm rocks of the levy and listened to Engel on repeat and found an old shuriken someone had dropped into the rocks.

It was Stockton, you can find discarded weapons anywhere, even firearms if you knew where to look.

Not too long after, my friend Ricardo, who I introduced to Steph's sister (and they've been married now for almost twenty years) but who hung out with the theater kids gifted me Rust in Peace (1990) by Megadeth. I must've listened to it a thousand times. It was epic.

And around this time Thomas got me and Steph into Lacuna Coil through their one track on Metal for the Masses vol. 1 (2002). We fell in love.

Steph got really into metal, she ended up picking up or shoplifting (never got a clear answer from her) Meteora (2003) from Linkin Park, and then she got Comalies (2002) from Lacuna Coil and our DnD games were never the same. One of the Scooby Gang members, Daniel, was super into Tool and Perfect Circle and those became staples at our table also.

I myself ended up really into symphonic metal, no doubt from my Dad's influences. I fell in love with Epica and After Forever and Kamelot, but also ended up on the Cradle of Filth train since their songs on Midian (2000) are nerdy af after Ricardo gave me a mix CD with mostly anime music on it.

After the Scooby Gang disintegrated and the Four Kings had gone in different directions, I was introduced to Dragonforce by some of the younger folks at the shop in Tucson I frequented, and fell in love.

Honestly for the longest time metal was about the only thing I listened to in my teens and early 20s. So what changed?

Well, around the time my family spent a year homeless I tried to share some of my love for metal with my Dad, who didn't care for any music made after Disco, which killed music for him (though I learned after he passed that he was big into Kraftwerk and Jan Hammer). He recoiled in what I can describe as disgust. He was bitter that he was living out of an RV in the woods while some rockstar wrote music about the Punisher. It made me feel a little ashamed to like something that he seemed to take as a personal affront.

Beyond that, the metal scene seemed a little unwelcoming in Arizona. I was a bit of an outsider, preferring dress shirts and eventually vests and ties, and I can sometimes carry myself a little too formally. But mostly, I kept encountering nazis and other racist fuckheads. It soured the whole scene to me. Even someone that I considered a friend turned out to be into nazi metal.

Around 2010 after I'd been in Tucson for almost five years, I took a music appreciation class to finish my first associate degree, and I developed a fondness for Elvis Costello. This brought me hard into new wave, and I started dating a new wave girl not too long after. She wasn't expecting to be on this mortal coil for too long, so she gave me an iPod (remember those?) loaded up with everything she'd think I'd enjoy, and I fell for Tears for Fears.

Don't cry, she made a miraculous recovery and lives in Germany now. Never got over how much Everybody Loves a Happy Ending (2004) felt so apropos.

So I got into the indie rock thing in Columbus, ended up hanging out with a bunch of hipsters through the 2010s. While my life and the world went to shit in 2020 I ended up rediscovering 90's alt pop and using that to keep me in a more bearable state of mind.

At one point, someone I hung out with in 2015 caught wind I liked Rob Zombie. She got me a ticket for the metal festival in town which was called Rock on the Range back then, and I gotta say that was probably the best show I've ever been to. Man knows how to own a crowd.

So about a year ago I meet these metal heads at goth night. They seem nice and I start going to karaoke. I don't generally come off as the kind of guy who can nail Dragula, but it's second nature for me at this point. I rediscovered how good nu metal sounded and how good it all felt.

I was a little wary at first 'cause of my previous experiences in the scene, but the folks I've met around town have been very cool and inclusive. Honestly I might've never left the scene if they were like this back in Tucson all those years ago.

I'm starting to get into newer bands, slowly. Someone randomly on Facebook recommended Castle Rat to me a couple months back and I was instantly in love. I think that's why I love metal, there's so much that just grabs me constantly, I'm constantly falling in love. They've got a 70's or 80s look and feel to them especially in their videos. It's the kind of music I'd like to make someday after all this practice starts to pay off. I've gotten really into them.

I announced this to my metal friends and one of them let me know they'd be at the metal fest this year, now called Sonic Temple. It made it very tempting, and ultimately I decided to go for it for the sheer number of bands I adored that would be there just on the last day.

Yeah it was a hell of a time.

Castle Rat was everything I hoped for. The Rat Queen fought monsters on stage and spewed blood and the bass made me feel all my organs. I stopped by Wind Rose, which a friend of mine recommended and have developed a taste for dwarf metal despite being a goblin myself (or goblin adjacent as it happens). Alestorm was good but I'd probably appreciate them more if I were still drinking. And was a teenager. Apocalyptica was just amazing, talk about feeling the bass. The entire show they were just exuding pure joy; they just seemed so absolutely happy to be there, it was infectious. Megadeth I couldn't get too close to, and someone ended up having a seizure next to me so I ended up bugging out after the paramedic got there. Dragonforce was an absolute dream, very different than I remember but still the same old power metal rock opera I yearn for. I don't usually enjoy doing what the singer says at shows, but I found myself unthinkingly following her commands. God I should get laid. Dethklok was amazing, and I left a tiny bit early by way of crowdsurfing. I regret not doing more pits throughout the day, but maybe my still recovering body is grateful.

I met a bunch of DnD nerds while sitting in the shade, I guess we just know our own. Traded plastic trinkets with a little girl. Ate a bunch of overpriced food and drink. Got compliments on my outfit, the funniest being in the pit at Dethklok when someone asked "why are you dressed so nice" and I just replied "I wanted to look nice" while I checked a different dude back into the crowd and a guy on the ground said "you do look really nice".

And the whole time I was having a lot of anxiety. My anxiety's been acting up badly all this month. Not sure if it's related to my surgery or if the dark forces of this world are just on the march. I got a small prescription of hydroxyzine which used to help, but across the three days I was on it I had awful nightmares and my anxiety overall worsened even though it did eliminate it for small periods of time during the day. Honestly May has just been a crucible.

But I guess it's important to also note how much better I am at navigating all this. Last time I found myself enjoying metal this much I was a terrified person full of rage. Even a couple years ago anxiety ripping my guts apart like this would be a good reason to not leave my house. Now, by and large, my problems don't become anyone else's. And that's something I'm happy about, being able to fight my battles and hold my head high.

Though I do hope the brutality that is May passes soon. I can't handle much more of this NSYNC insanity. Well, I guess I can, I just don't want to.

Here's to a metal summer, my friends.