Internet culture: a bizarre yet interesting way of communicating uncommon ideas and ridiculous jokes to millions of people around the world, or a parade of dumbasses with limited Photoshop skills who think they’re fucking geniuses for showing us what everyday assholes think of black metal corpsepaint? It sometimes seems like we’re reaching a breaking point of Internet tolerance in heavy music, with some new personalities rising on their webseries or podcasts alone while others make us want to punt our laptops out the window with their wry commentary over videos of other people actually doing shit. This raises the question: how has Internet culture changed heavy music, and which bands have benefited from it the most?
On the latest episode of MoshTalks Cover Stories, puckish web personality Terry “Beez” Bezer speaks to fondue-voiced guitarist and producer Nik Nocturnal about the influence of Internet culture on the heavy music scene, specifically in regard to ‘reacts’ videos. The first band that Beezareeno brings up is Kentucky hardcore uvula-flickers Knocked Loose, who he thinks have a lot of their roots in Mother Internet’s fertile soil.
“They were one of the first bands from our scene to get big off of meme culture,” says Beezarian, cupping his invisible bosom with enthusiasm. “You know that big, like, AWR AWR sound effect, that became a meme. They were one of the first bands from our world to benefit from that. And it’s so weird that, like, it’s been so normalized for years — people get big off of being on video game soundtracks, on movie soundtracks, but when it’s something like meme culture…crazy right?”
“Yeah, I mean, I more so have grown up with that nowadays,” says Mr. Nocturnal, “so I’m just used to someone doing something dumb that’s just like ten seconds, and then exploding.”
Check out the full episode below:
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Words by Chris Krovatin
