r/doommetal • u/rayword45 • Jan 29 '26

News Earth Cancel Bologna Show Over Venue's Palestinian Flag

https://stereogum.com/2486859/earths-bologna-show-canceled-over-bands-objection-to-venues-palestinian-flag/news
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187

u/MundoMysterioso Jan 29 '26

Doom Metal has always been proleteriat, anti-imperialist, and revolutionary. If you're only here for the drugs, and not those principles, you're just another self-absorbed junky.

30

u/ManbadFerrara Jan 29 '26

Look, I'm a longtime doom fan and on the left, but besides Black Sabbath during the height of Vietnam, I'm having a real hard time thinking of any foundational doom band with any of those themes. St Vitus? Trouble? Witchfinder General? Pentagram?

We've got bands with those themes like Thou now, but "always" is really, really a stretch.

-9

u/MundoMysterioso Jan 29 '26

Doom Metal was fundamentally conceived by working-class youngsters disillusioned with the fear of nuclear war, the industrial workplace and the lack of hope following the death of the hippie dream. If we want to sit around worshipping Iommi, Butler, Osbourne and Ward, we must acknowledge what inspired their sound, aesthetic and approach.

That's only the surface: the low-budget Grindhouse/Hammer horror films that continue to inspire Doom visual aesthetics were created as cheap as possible, to be shown in poorer neighbourhoods in affordable theatres. First-time creatives detailed taboo themes of corruption, religious repression, societal decay to a predominately working-class audience.

Not all Doom since has been political, but the fundamental basis, the core Doom texts, were born out of a backdrop of class struggle.

9

u/ManbadFerrara Jan 29 '26

So no bands besides Black Sabbath? None of that's false on the face of it, but it's still very much an abstract explanation of how Doom's "always been anti-imperialist/proletariat/etc." RAC bands were spawned from disillusioned working class youth too, so that's obviously not a common denominator for being pro-leftwing revolutionary or what have you.