As Blood Runs Black in KK: Listening to Maria Campbell

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I’m listening to “Robert Love Rebecca XXX” by Maria Campbell. This metal / hardcore band from the Philippines is supporting As Blood Runs Black, when they come to Kota Kinabalu on July 9th, 2012. The concert is at Razz Ma Tazz.

Nuk and Amos introduced this culture to me a year ago – metal, moshing, Walls of Death… it does my head in. I want to know more, hear more, see more, meet more.

Why? Because I gel with it? No! I think: what the hell IS this? The guy is growling, I can’t hear the lyrics. Is it singing? It’s so goddamn scary.

I hear other things too. Frenetic guitars; Maria Campbell is SO tight. In “Robert Love Rebecca XXX” there’s a slow build before the singer launches in with his madness:

“…started over again,” he growls, like a demon from Hell.

They start, they stop, they build and build, the pulse changes one way, another way, faster and faster – drums and guitars so together. They punish their instruments, tearing up a phrase again and again, chopping the rhythms, then STOP. Then they build up a new phrase, again and again to finally crescendo out.

It’s so skilled. You cannot play this music if you cannot really play. As a metal band member once said: “We don’t want to play lame, no-skills music.”

Above all, there is Passion. Everything about this music, this culture, is Passion.

Passion for the scene. Nobody is in this by accident. They’ve found this space in the world. They don’t have money but they damned well find it to buy all the RM180 “Meet and Greet” passes, get to a Monday night concert and be totally stoked about it.

They appreciate what Shockwave and their partners are doing. My inbox is flooded with hundreds of comments from the “As Blood Runs Black Live in KK” Facebook page. There is nothing blasé about metal supporters. They want this concert to happen.

Passion for the music. Yes, it really is about the music. At a metal concert there are no girls sighing, “Oh, he’s so gorgeous!” because up on stage it’s sweating, thrashing, snarling musical insanity unleashed. No-one cares what they look like and Gorgeous does not belong.

The blokes up front worship the lead guitarist, or slam into their mates, or climb on the growling singer who is eating his mic. Time is precious. The gig is here. Live it now.

“Robert Love Rebecca XXX” just stopped playing, for the twentieth time, while I write this. And you know what? The world just went…pale. Quiet. Insipid. It went from high-definition colour to black-and-white analog; from JBL Vertec to supermarket speaker; from intense, frenzied metal to…well, every other kind of music.

So I’ll play it again as I post this up. If someone sends me the lyrics for “Robert Love Rebecca XXX”, well, I think I will be in Heaven. Or maybe I should say Hell.

See you on July 9th, 2012, when As Blood Runs Black and Maria Campbell come to KK.