METAL MONDAY

It’s not Monday, which is a good thing in life, but maybe less effective for my titled post. Oh well. Anyway, in the past few weeks, I have been in a bit of a music drought, not in the sense that I can’t find anything to listen to, but more in the sense that I don’t have a go-to artist/album/playlist, like I typically do. Instead, I’ve been going through a lot of old playlists and have also been pretty into Spotify’s Daily Mixes (made just for me!). It’s a good blend of new and familiar tracks and I guess that is what I need now.

Anyway, one constant in my music life has been my emo mainstays. I’ve been listening to some emo tracks almost everyday and weirdly enough, my new foray into spinning has actually increased my emo exposure.

Let me explain.

I typically hate spinning or any sort of instructed exercise, but was recently introduced to the Monster Cycle in NYC and have been obsessed. It’s still spinning, but it’s definitely a more alternative/laid-back crowd and they have unique emo and metal themed rides, which are right up my alley.

While I’ve always been into emo/screamo, I am not sure that I would really consider myself/my music tastes “metal.” Given this, I was a bit anxious when I signed up for the “Metal Monday” ride as part of me was self-conscious that I would not be “metal” enough; however I realized that maybe metal wasn’t as intense as I had thought.

A lot of the songs that were played during the ride were more of what I would call “90’s hair metal”. Not as much screaming as screamo, but pretty intense guitar and drum riffs. Also, part of the Monster Cycle is that they play the corresponding music videos during the ride, which is unique and a pretty good distraction. I spent quite a bit of my ride watching these videos and semi-analyzing them. A few things I noticed, which maybe are obvious to true metal fans, but were new and interesting to me:

• There is a large overlap between metal and horror. Pretty much every music video had some element of horror in it, whether it was monsters, disturbing images, etc.
• Metal videos like featuring the theme of death. I guess that one might have been obvious. But, it almost seemed cliche after a while. Three of the videos we watched were set in graveyards and one was in a run-down church that definitely had a death vibe
• The videos always feature an “objectively hot girl”. I guess this is not specific to metal videos, but still kind of interesting that they would still be featured in them

Anyway, those are a few of my insightful learnings from my recent Metal Monday spin class. I think some of the cliched aspects of the music videos actually made me feel that metal was less intense than I thought.

I actually loved the class, had one of the best workouts ever, and realized that maybe I am intense enough for metal (or it’s intense enough for me). Good day.