‘Behold Death, Darkness, Chaos and the Void’

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/style/queens-underground-metal-music.html

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the look

D.I.Y. metal music has spawned a tightknit community of headbangers in Queens.

Photographs by Timothy O’Connell

Text by Kim Kelly

Produced by Eve Lyons

The visual language of heavy metal is punctuated by certain age-old signifiers: denim, leather, bullet belts, long hair, black T-shirts with skeletal logos. Depending on how your night has gone, blood.

This unofficial uniform isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s a tribal marker that crosses national borders and language barriers, and serves as a means to separate us from them — the heshers from the squares.

Steve Proana, who lives in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Queens, understands the importance of finding that perfect band shirt. He became a collector eight years ago, after unearthing a 1987 Megadeth tour tee in an old Manhattan thrift shop. He frequently posts about his prodigious collection of metal memorabilia on social media and occasionally sells pieces of it.

“Owning old-school metal shirts is like holding a piece of history,” Mr. Proana said. One of the hallmarks of heavy metal fandom is its reverence for the past; even as the genre continues to evolve and progress, ’80s thrash and ’90s death metal bands remain in heavy rotation and continue to find new fans.

“It is a statement of what we are and what we always will be, and that is staying true to our old-school metal roots,” he said, his feet clad in the kind of puffy white high-top sneakers favored by the members of Slayer, Sepultura and Anthrax. Mr. Proana’s home is packed with cherished totems from a bygone era — racks of sneakers, Bolt Thrower patches, rare Demolition Hammer T-shirts — that spill over into his shop.

New York City’s metal clubs are concentrated primarily in Brooklyn and Manhattan. But in Queens — with its large community of Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico and Central and South American countries — clubs like Blackthorn 51, in Elmhurst, and Sabor Norteño, in Corona, form a nexus for the borough’s small but fiercely dedicated D.I.Y. metal scene.

Maca Buritica was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and moved to Florida when she was 10. There, she learned how to play guitar at age 15 and was involved in several left-wing punk bands. After years spent singing about animal rights and women’s liberation down South, she moved to New York City in 2014, picked up a bass and joined the Queens black metal band Nite Rite as a bassist in 2017.

The band’s music is heavily atmospheric, melodic and monochromatic, with occult overtones (audience members can expect to “behold death, darkness, chaos and the void” at a typical show) and a frosty Scandinavian mien that belies its progenitors’ South American origin.

Latinx clubs and shows booked by Latinx metal promoters are more likely to draw a Latinx crowd, Ms. Buritica said, but the music itself comes before any linguistic or cultural considerations. “Metal is definitely a universal language,” she said. “We personally sing in English with some songs in Spanish. However, our fluency in Spanish allows us to greatly connect to the Latinx metal scene.”

That these metalheads would gravitate toward spaces where Spanish is spoken freely and the phrase “Satanic Hispanic” (a slightly tongue-in-cheek moniker used in the metal community that Mr. Proana finds “entertaining” and Ms. Buritica thinks is ignorant) is nowhere to be heard makes sense, especially at a time when ICE raids and anti-immigrant rhetoric dominate American news headlines.

Moreover, Latinx clubs are an alternative to those that continue to host racist metal bands, some of which produce music and merchandise that perpetuate fascist ideologies. And for many of these metalheads, the clubs are close to home.

But metal’s cultural centers are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Music clubs throughout the five boroughs are dying at an alarming rate, and those that served the metal community have been hit especially hard, with multiple pivotal clubs closing in quick succession.

The metalheads who frequent the concert circuit in Sunnyside or Corona aren’t avoiding a trip to another borough; there’s hardly anywhere left for them — or any other fans of underground metal — to go.

When the Acheron, a metal haven in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, closed in 2016, it left a limited number of clubs that regularly host more extreme or lesser-known metal bands. Saint Vitus Bar, in Greenpoint, and Lucky 13, in Gowanus, have the most lively performance rosters, and both are in corners of Brooklyn not easily accessible by subway.

Bigger acts have more freedom of choice in terms of which clubs they're able to play, but to find the kind of raw, less-accessible metal that Mr. Proana, Ms. Buritica and their friends love, there are precious few options — which is why D.I.Y. shows held in bars and basements have become the lifeblood of their scene.

“It is hard already to make ends meet living in this expensive city, especially if you are an immigrant who is in the scene,” Mr. Proana said, noting that a lack of reliable public transportation also hamstrings working-class metal fans’ ability to travel to further-flung clubs. “I think it is crucial that people in the scene keep it D.I.Y. — because if not us, then who? Especially now that so many great venues are closing down, it’s devastating. However, despite such great losses, we must move forward and make the best of what little we have. Sometimes you just need a little spark to create a fire.”

That spark has indeed begun to spread beyond the borders of Queens. Mr. Proana’s death thrash band Skullsplitter regularly appears at clubs around New York, and Ms. Buritica’s band recently played Lucky 13, in Brooklyn. She and her bandmate Jeff Monge are planning a multiday festival at Saint Vitus called Metal Punk Death Fest, which is scheduled for September.

They both urge metalheads from across the city to be more supportive of their local scenes, to show up for smaller touring bands who skip Brooklyn, and to not be afraid to take a longer ride on the subway or the bus in order to discover something magical.

“I think that any band that tries to keep the scene alive in their hometowns contributes into the American metal scene in some way, and I think that’s something very special,” Mr. Proana said.

Timothy O’Connell is a photographer in Brooklyn. Kim Kelly is the heavy metal editor at Noisey, Vice’s music and culture vertical.