About metal bars
Blast from the (winter of 2023) past.
In the winter of 2023, I had my first and only attempt at freelance journalism, or something like that. In early December, my actual journalist friend and I attended some lit mag release parties in the city and ran into one of his mutuals who was starting a zine. It was called Door Zine, and the first edition was themed Metal Bars, which was going to be an exploration of the metal bars that separate spaces, places, and living things.
When my friend’s friend told us that she was taking pitches, I was thrilled yet anxious. If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s brainstorming the outlandish or the insane. I frantically came up with a couple of ideas and sent them her way the following week. The one she liked the most was my most literal interpretation of “metal bars”, and I was suddenly off to the races. A couple of days before Christmas, I took the train to Greenpoint and watched a show at a heavy metal bar for the first time. Taking notes on my phone and interviewing people on voice memos, I put together a roughly 1300-words dispatch, or the journalistic term for an observational piece. I wrote a draft, received edits, revised, and then left the Google Doc untouched for about a year and a half. The last I heard from my friend’s friend was when she sent me a nice postcard from Morocco.
On the train this morning, I suddenly remembered this small journalistic moment in my life, and looking back, it was pretty incredible that I had the balls to give it a stab. I decided today that this dusty dispatch sitting in the vault now needed, and deserved, a real place to sit. Below is what would have hopefully been published in the first edition of Door Zine.
The Metal Bar - December 20, 2023
It’s easy to miss the entrance to Saint Vitus, a solid black door in the run-of-the-mill stretch of ethnic cafes, gourmet delis, and brightly lit liquor stores in Greenpoint. The cue is the cluster of colorful graffitied stickers and an upside-down crucifix in the adjacent window. Inside, a dim, long hallway opens into a wide bar illuminated in red and occupied by two bartenders and a few chattering patrons. It can be hard to see, given the black walls, floors, stools, and lack of windows. The brightest thing in the room is a TV in the corner playing baseball. Autographed frames, mini busts, goblets, candles, skulls, and vinyls line the backbar.
One of New York City’s three exclusively heavy metal bars, Saint Vitus opened in 2011. Its co-founders, musicians-cum-bartenders Arty Shepherd and George Souleidis were bonded by their shared passion for music. Inspired by Shepherd’s time as a touring musician, they came up with the idea for a metal bar. While traveling with his band around the world, Shepherd noticed that locals were quick to invite him out to metal bars and he began to take notes. With the help of David Castillo, fellow Primitive Weapons bandmate, the space formerly occupied by a plumbing school was transformed into a metalhead hub and what has been described as a second home by regulars. Saint Vitus’s history as a venue is marked by legendary acts: Nirvana’s Hall of Fame afterparty, a secret show by Megadeth, an Anthrax’s cancer benefit concert, the latter two being part of America’s thrash metal Big Four. The bar being a well-traversed music venue, it’s unsurprising that most of its staff are musicians. Some concertgoers I spoke to went as far to name Saint Vitus as the metal capital of New York, the East Coast, or even the US.
Fifteen minutes before the show, a small crowd started forming in the back room with the sound stage, emblazoned with Saint Vitus’s one-eyed skull logo. Several goers sported worn black leather jackets or patchwork jackets made of studded denim, leather, and patterned cloth. Others hung oversized black t-shirts with stylized emblems or band logos over skinny jeans. The majority of the audience were men, many letting their hair hang below their shoulders and some donning trucker caps, beanies, or hoods. Tattoos peaked out from shirt collars and jacket sleeves—but no KISS face paint. I had changed into a plain black baggy tee, ripped jeans, and lace-up Doc Martens from office attire to fit in and snuggled up next to an irisless mannequin with face tattoos.
As an epic boom of bass signaled the start of the first set, about thirty patrons gathered in the back room. Three stolid, dark magenta shadows loomed onstage and began to strike in unison. Each member stood firmly in place, unmoving figures with downturned eyes. Ozoth kicked off the show with doom metal, a subgenre defined by slow tempos and thick noise. Groups naturally disassembled and pairs separated into ones, instinctively stepping into their own lane. Everyone was in their own spotlight, stoically gazing ahead.
The audience limbered up by gently headbanging to the drumline, their long hair swaying like veils. They mimed guitar riffs and drums, wrists low to their bodies. Whenever the vocalist built up to a crescendo, finger horns rose overhead, while a single hand clutched at air like a precious object. One person was off to the side sketching in a notebook, while many others shuffled forward to record on their phones.
Next, black ‘n’ roll band Funeral Dancer took the stage. Coated in emerald green light, the leather-jacketed, skinny-jeaned members paced about the stage, bringing forth a crazed energy that loosened the crowd. When not covered in trestles of hair, their faces bore tight grimaces or concentrated squints, sweat dripping as their headbangs intensified.
When I found them before the show, Funeral Dancer’s members seemed at ease, sipping on beers and heartily chatting. Without knowing they were a band, I asked them if they knew where I could hang my coat. They seemed like sensible bar casuals who could help me out.
“Metal is a soul journey, you should really let your spirit out into it,” the band’s frontman Tony Melio told me.
“Definitely not a hateful type of genre for sure, as much as people think,” added Joe Reynolds, the drummer. “The people behind the instruments are as normal as can be.”
Funeral Dancer formed in 2019, but first played as Locus Mortis, a death metal band based on Long Island. Most members stayed on to become the band I saw on stage.
Although attributes such as extended guitar solos, heavy drum beats, and high volume define metal as a genre, a lot of room exists for variation. Funeral Dancer resists basic categorization, considering itself black ‘n’ roll, a mix of rock ‘n’ roll and black metal. The latter is characterized by fast tempo, vocal shrieks, and distortion, a fuzzed out effect caused by pushing an audio signal beyond its normal limits. Such subgenre synthesizing is common in the ever-expanding world of metal, which includes grindcore, deathcore, glam metal, doom thrash, and indie metal.
“As each day goes on, there’s like a million more,” said Nick Luisi, a Funeral Dancer guitarist. Mix your own set of words, and you may find yourself with a new subgenre of metal.
At the climax of the set, the three guitarists planted themselves at the front of the stage, forming a wall in front of the vocalist whose arms stretched into a reverent raise.
The last band of the night, Decept, opened with a spoken word prelude before the vocalist burst into belting, stomping, kicking, arching, jumping, eventually descending to the audience floor. Audience members bobbed up and down, dancing in a deep red glow. Thinking back to riotous basement shows during college, I wondered if this would be the start of a mosh pit (It wasn’t.). I respected the energy, but was glad to avoid potential injury.
During the whole show, I had a hard time making out any lyrics, too used to singsongy pop hits and meticulously lip-synced TikToks. But as my heart violently fluttered at each power chord and my whole body vibrated with the bass, I started to understand the power of pure sound. It wasn’t really about the words, but the sensations and feelings I was experiencing with the rest of the crowd. Perhaps high volume and screams are not always meant to blow out your ears, but to reach you in a way that words cannot.
There was something both transcendent and triumphant in hearing guttural and inhaled screams, as if they were sounds buried deep in human flesh, never meant to be heard, sounds being let out for the first time.
Most metalheads were introduced to the genre by family or friends. Many had grown up with metal music from a young age, referring to it fondly like a childhood friend. Metal could be something stumbled upon in a deep corner of the Internet, or an heirloom passed down with care.
As the show came to an end, the crowd slowly filtered out. Groupies lingered behind, watching the bands pass around congratulatory drinks.
When I stepped out of Saint Vitus onto Manhattan Avenue, into the brisk cold, the whole thing felt like a blur. My transformation suddenly reversed, and now I was just someone trying to catch the train home. The only evidence of my night was the ringing in my ears and a fading entry stamp on my hand.
-MH