How Spitzy Got His Groove Back (at a Doom Metal Show)

Cambridge science nerds claim our musical tastes grow soft with age. Oh really? If that's true, then how do you explain this stab wound?

It was eleven o’clock at night, and I was standing in a sea of black leather and face piercings. Onstage, a doom metal band called Sleep was pounding out massive, sludgy riffs that made my extremities vibrate. The lead singer was screaming about “damned souls gathering in the valley of the Evil One,” and the thoroughly stoned crowd nodded along in approval. The air was filled with dense marijuana smoke, my eardrums were dangerously close to imploding, and I was bleeding from my left forearm, my vital fluids dripping like a leaky faucet onto a floor covered in beer, glass, and cigarette butts.

Also—and this is the most important part—I'm 50. So according to science, I wasn’t supposed to be enjoying any of this.

Let's start with the science. Cambridge researchers analyzed the listening habits of 250,000 people over a 10-year period and found that our listening habits change radically as we age. As teenagers, we’re in the “Intense Stage,” where we favor punk, hip-hop, heavy metal, or anything that’ll piss off our parents. During our 20s and 30s, we move on to the “Contemporary Stage,” where we’re more inclined to seek out pop and R&B. By the time we reach middle age—i.e. the “Sophisticated Stage”—we're too preoccupied with jobs and family to be musically adventurous, so we develop a fondness for classical, folk, and other genres that would’ve made our younger selves recoil in horror.

These findings were personally terrifying, and a little offensive. It's basically saying, “Hey, Grandpa. I don’t even have to look at your Spotify to know your taste in music suuuuuucks.” But what's especially infuriating about this study is, for the most part, it has me dead to rights. In my teens and 20s, I loved anything loud and obnoxious. I listened to the Replacements, the Pixies, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Jesus Lizard, and any and all bands designed to scare or annoy adults with jobs. But lately… well, I don't want to get into specifics, but let’s just say my music collection leans heavily toward sensitive caucasians with acoustic guitars. 

I want a second chance. Even though the Cambridge study might be a little bit true doesn’t mean it has to be true. Musical taste may be colored by age, but it’s also dictated by changing circumstances. With a wife and kids, it isn’t as easy to go out and explore new music anymore. You need adventurous friends who listen to more than just the Coffee House station on Sirius.

I just so happen to have such a friend. His name is Carl. He's a high school principal and a dad around my age. And he’s into doom metal. He enjoys anything where the lyrics are about Satan and aliens, and the bass is very, very, very heavy. On a recent evening, he had an extra ticket to see Sleep, and I immediately agreed to join him, despite knowing nothing about the band other than that they have a 63-minute opus to weed called “Dopesmoker.”

“These guys are face-melters,” Carl assured me as if this was a compelling reason to witness a live performance.

We set off for Thalia Hall, on Chicago’s south side, where the streets are numbered and the buildings look like Martin Scorsese sets. During the trip, I told Carl about the Cambridge study, and he dismissed it with a sneering laugh. “That's not accurate at all,” he said. “If anything, my musical tastes are regressing, big time.”

During his teenage years, he told me, he ingested a steady diet of top 40, from U2 to R.E.M. It wasn't until later in life, when he was 36 and married, that he first discovered the siren song of doom metal.

Why? For roughly the same reasons I'm heading downtown to see a band I've never heard of, who will likely decimate my middle-aged eardrums. Because I have a friend in my age range with an extra ticket.

We were supposed to be joined by another dad, Jeremy. Of the three of us, Jeremy is the true metal guy, the one who follows all the underground music Reddits and can drop band names that'll make you feel instantly old and irrelevant. “Have you heard the new Carcass album yet?” Jeremy will ask as we’re busy trying to get our kids to stop eating their own boogers. “Just the name is badass. Surgical Steel.”

His attendance was a given. But then he canceled on us, claiming he’d already promised to join his wife to a Michael McDonald/ Toto double-bill at the Ravinia. He grimaced when he told us the sad news, giving us the impression that this was the last place on earth he wanted to be. But his wife told a different story.

“He loves Michael McDonald,” she admitted to us. “He’s been excited about this show all year.”

Score one for the Cambridge study.

The Sleep show was slated to begin at eight. Being seasoned rock-concert-goers, we knew enough not to arrive until at least nine. Bands never start on time, certainly not bands that (we assumed) serve punchbowls of goats’ blood backstage. There was valet parking available, but Carl insisted that “valet isn’t metal,” so we drove around until we found street parking in front of a sketchy-looking 24-hour taqueria place.

Our attempt to be fashionably late backfired. The opening band, Corrections House, didn’t come on till ten. They were very loud and very Satan-y, but not scary, despite their best attempts. The lead singer preach-sang from a pulpit and the only lyric I could make out from his caterwauling was “plucked out her eeeeeeeeyes!” But that's as frightening as it got. Have you ever seen a guy with a baritone sax break into violent headbanging? Trust me, it will not put the fear of the Antichrist in you. 

At almost eleven, we were still waiting. Standing and doing nothing for two hours is not as fun at 50 as it was in your 20s. And then, as a true test of whether I really wanted to be here, a guy wearing leather wristbands with half-inch rivet spikes pushed past me, and I felt a prick on my arm. And then I saw the blood, streaking down my forearm a little too thickly for my liking. 

“What the hell?” I shouted at the guy with the wrist spikes. “You fucking sliced me, man!”

He turned and noticed the blood, and offered an apologetic half-smile. "Sorry, dude,” he said. “That’s never happened to me before.”

Really? Cause I'd think if you had dozens of tiny metal spikes jutting from your wrists, shiving random people in crowds is probably something that happens to you with some regularity. 

Before I could react, the lights went down and Sleep took the stage. As soon as the first pummeling, testicle-rearranging note was plucked, hundreds of guys dressed in ill-fitting black leather pants lit up their pipes, vaporizers, joints, and one-hitters. A cloud of blue smoke rose from the darkness, and a shirtless Matt Pike, their legendary guitarist, who was wearing jeans that probably fit him 20 years ago (but now.... not so much), did things to his guitar that shouldn't be possible without Dark Lord mentoring.

There was a part of me that wanted to go home. A big part. The part that's usually watching Seinfeld reruns in bed with his wife at eleven. And Seinfeld reruns aren’t nearly as aurally oppressive. Carl and I suppressed yawns, not because we wanted to look cool, but because every yawn was potentially another lungful of second-hand pot smoke, and I was already feeling a little high. Also, my arm hadn’t stopped bleeding.

If I'd known in advance what this would be like, I would’ve said no. Not because it was surprising. Other than the stabbing, it wasn’t all that different from every other rock show I attended in my youth. But—okay fine, Cambridge Poindexters—it was different because I'm older. I'm like a 60-year-old Peter North at a gang bang. I know how to do this, but I'm so tired, and can't it just be over already?

“Ride the dragon toward the crimson eye,” the lead singer growled through his immense wizard's beard. “Flap the wings under Mars’s red sky! The reptile pushes itself out into space! Leaving behind… the human race!”

It's a funny thing about doom-metal shows; just when you think you're one last gasp from curling up on the ground in the fetal position, everything changes. It's similar to what marathon runners experience when they think they can't run anymore. You find your second wind. One minute, Carl and I were teetering on our old man legs, trying not to be too obvious when we glanced at our watches. And the next, we were full-body throbbing along with the music. The riffs were so thick and sludgy, it felt like there were mashed potatoes in our pockets. Every song sounded like it should be about Greek mythological creatures having unprotected sex on Stonehenge. And I fucking loved it. Even with my bleeding arm. Especially with my bleeding arm.

Whenever I go anywhere with my wife and son, we bring a diaper bag loaded for any emergency. Bandages, antiseptic, antibiotic cream, antibacterial wipes, anti-everything, whatever you need. But trapped in the middle of this sweaty doom-loving throng, I had no access to first aid. Not even a child-sized Dora the Explorer bandaid. Nobody there cared if I bled to death. I could’ve tried to force my way towards the exit, but even then my medical options were limited. I might as well just lose myself in the hammering bass lines and let it bleed, man, let it bleed. When your entire existence is about being responsible and vigilant and “No, no, don't touch that, because Daddy said so, that's why,” there's a wonderful freedom that comes from just letting it bleed.

I raised my arm with the crowd for synchronized fist-pumping—if only to celebrate the band rhyming “reptile master” with “space-pod rising faster”—and splattered the guy standing next to me in blood. Whatever. You didn't want some stranger's viscous fluid on you, maybe you don't come to a doom metal show, dude!

The show ended around one-ish, and both Carl and I were weirdly not sleepy. We should’ve gone home. It made sense to go home. We both had to be up early, to feed our children and be responsible parents and spouses. But at that moment, we didn't care. 

“I want a fucking burrito,” Carl informed me. He may or may not have breathed in too much second-hand weed. “Let's get a burrito!” 

“Fuck yeah,” I screamed. “And then I’m getting a tetanus shot!”

We raised our hands in a devil-horn salute, which at any age is still a binding agreement.