Article - Metal, the gayest music in town

When it comes to metal, humor is a strange thing. Unless you’re Spinal Tap, jokes make awkward bunkmates with so much aggressive behavior, but Athens’ sludge rockers Harvey Milk and the thunderously uplifting trio Torche (Atlanta/Miami) balance fiery songs with laconic humor that dovetails nicely with their respective sounds. But neither one of them are what you would call a typical metal band.

Torche’s guitarist/vocalist Steve Brooks doesn’t even like using the term “metal” when talking about his band’s sprawling, post-rock numbers. “Metal is just something different altogether, although it is the gayest music around,” he says before offering up a laundry list of what makes metal so gay: sweaty men wearing leather and long-hair, beating each other up and bro’ing down in the pit. “It’s very gay,” he adds.

Brooks is one of the few openly gay frontmen in the game, and his motives seem rooted more in a self-effacing punk philosophy than the manly nature of metal. Take the band’s T-shirts, for example. One of Torche’s most iconic tees is a parody of the typical hardcore/straight edge shirt, altered to say “not so straight.” It’s almost offensive, but not really.

Harvey Milk mines a similar, though much weirder, sense of humor. After all, the name of the group is Harvey Milk, though it’s by no means a political statement. “We only ever wanted to have fun playing music,” says vocalist/guitarist Creston Spiers. “We thought it was funny to use a real person’s name, especially one that has a ring to it like Harvey Milk, but it was never meant to be homophobic.” Sure it’s a provocative name, but when transposed onto their most iconic T-shirt which sports a shaky, hand-drawn image of E.T. smoking a joint, or the wicked witch on the commode, eating a hamburger, the context is transformed into something completely different. “Really,” says Spears, “we’re just having fun playing music, and that’s all we ever wanted to do.”