On First Love
Aug 16th 2007steak_girlDeath Metal
Brian’s band, Vulgarizer hasn’t played in a while, but over the last week, they had a string of three shows, Friday in Spokane, Saturday in Everett and Monday in Seattle. I hadn’t seen them play in a very long time, so I figured I could catch them at their Everett show. The biggest treat of this all is that my first love of a death metal band, Maha Ma Waldi was playing with them also.
I might not have ever mentioned Maha Ma Waldi because I haven’t seen them play since I first fell in love with them and death metal some 2-3 years ago (mostly due to the fact that they’re not a local band). I’m Chinese and I grew up listening to Chinese music…I still sing Chinese songs (very badly) whenever I cook, so you can imagine how very opposite of my musical taste death metal might be. Then my best friend, Brian, joined a metal band so I started going to his shows to show my love. I started liking their stuff quite a bit, but I can’t tell if my opinion was completely biased because…well…my best friend is the lead singer, what’s not to love? Still, I had a hard time liking any other metal bands. On the 3rd or 4th show that I saw, Maha Ma Waldi was playing and I just feel in love. They more or less served as a gateway drug in which after I’ve developed a love for one metal band, I was able to appreciate other metal bands. To be fair, there are far more bad generic metal bands than truly good ones…and for death metal more so than most music, bad metal is a fucking train wreck.
What’s so great about Maha Ma Waldi? This isn’t the only reason, but the thing that draws everyone in initially is the fact that the lead singer has one arm…not only that, but the lead singer is also their ONLY guitar player. When people see a dude with one arm going up on stage with guitar strapped around his neck while adjusting the mic, they are naturally going to gather around for some good curiosity stares. Then the guy plays and he just blows everyone’s mind. It is hypnotic to watch him play. And the guy could sing too.
Since it has been at least a couple years, I thought perhaps I was wrong in giving the band too much credit. I figured after a couple years of hearing some good fucking metal, they would become that first crush that you run into much later in life and you wonder what the hell you saw in the boy in the first place. They actually got better. If you ever get a chance, make some effort to catch their show.
The city of Everett was still the butt-hole of a city that I remembered. Why do I say that about the place? Well…I got to the show around 10. I was a bit hungry despite having eaten dinner, so I wanted to get some food. The Subway Sandwich and Taco Del Mar across the street just closed. This was at 10…on a Saturday night…in “downtown” Everett. I ended up paying 3 bucks to get into a club across the street because it was the only place serving food within walking distance. The club was half packed with mostly dudes. I sat at the bar and ordered some food. While I was eating and chatting with the boys next to me, I had no less than two guys come up to me to ask me to dance…to the ghetto booty hip-hop playing. Do you know how desperate a guy has to be to approach a girl sitting at a bar eating her food while talking to two guys and the girl has a full beer glass? Obviously Everett desperate, but yeah…this is not my favorite city to hang out in.
Brian’s band played last that night and he did one of my favorite thing where he pulled a metal singer from the crowd, wished the guy happy birthday and they sand a duet together. Have you ever heard a metal duet? It’s like two war demons screaming at each other, which basically equals awesome.