Practice

He's such a brutal frontman though, Doom thought. We're lucky to have such a force in Cold Forest. That's exactly why it was so difficult for him to understand his love of deserts. Deserts in most cases, were not brutal, and brutal was what their music was supposed to be.

Doom himself was one of the most brutal black metal guitarists around. He might have even been 1/16th Norwegian and had as a child even tried to set fire to his school. Not quite a church, but close enough. He was brooding and often solitary, like a lone wolf in a deep forest. A Cold Forest. Even at that young age he hated the system and society. Either that or he just didn't want to go to school and thought, if there is no actual, physical school, you don't have to go to it.

Maniacal loved cheese though, in particular French, often very expensive cheese. He also loved various quenelles, pâtés, terrines, roulades, and galantines. This at first glance was not very brutal. All the hedonistic and nihilist justifications in the world were not enough to justify the habit to his bandmates and led to many difficult conversations.

“But think about the waste, pain and death it takes to make good foie gras!” he would plead, half stammering, cracking his knuckles. Nobody bought it.

“Stop cracking your knuckles. You're not going to be able to play bass even. Its bad for you,” implored Doom not really looking at him. He was sitting on the couch looking at the swirling patterns in the plush, shag carpetting. Their latest drummer Dethcrusher sat behind the drum kit across from the couch, twirling his drum sticks and staring into space. He dropped a stick again and casually bent over to pick it up.

“Oh, it’s bad for me is it? It’s not bad for anyone. It has no effect. You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Bullshit. Just listen to it. You already have other issues, we don’t need this now,” Maniacal added instantly regretting it.

The knife dug deep. His increasing girth was a very large, very black elephant in the practice room. It wasn’t even something like tendonitis at the buzzsaw speeds that he tried to play guitar which would be a death knell for Cold Forest's music. Not even a cool death knell, like if he had some insane disease which caused him to puke blood onstage and then die by spontaneous human combustion, but a slow, boring one. A slow death which would ironically be a pretty good theme for one of their songs Doom thought. Doom looked at their drummer Dethcrusher who decided to come to practice who just lost another stick to a misjudged, theatrical spin which came clanking down on this kit after hitting the low, stuccoed ceiling.

"You know, um, we've talked about this before. How are we going to go on stage looking like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like, you know, out of shape,” ended Doom looking Maniacal directly now.

Maniacal looked back at him not so much as he looked through him. When he did, in fact, before he did, Doom regretted saying anything. He knew he had to. It was more than just a personal issue, it was becoming a Cold Forest issue.

"If we look like soft, plump women on stage, who will come to see us? Who is going to know how hard and cold we are?" he said, losing himself, pleading with his eyes. "Who would give shit about a Cold Forest that likes eclairs more than metal?"

Over the past couple of months Doom had tried to address the issue indirectly, framing the weight and eating issue in encouraging terms and of hindering possible gains. This was spearheaded by putting up pictures he ripped out of his older brother's men's magazines and pinning them up on their practice space wall. The effect would be subtle, Maniacal would see all of these guys in really good shape and then while at rehearsal imagining himself on stage, would be imbued with a sense of well being that would subconsciously make him eat less and work out more. It didn’t work. So he tried being as direct as he could.

“Listen, we need to be brutal on stage. I get that obviously. We need to imbue fear and despair, so I fixed the belt so it looks really badass now okay? Just leave me alone.” Dethcrusher sat staring blankly at the both of them.

Doom hated when practice ended like this, with no closure, nothing changed, no victories small or large. It was just more muddling forward in a thing they wanted to love which didn’t love them back . It was the music that drove him, that drove them to keep on going. It was the hatred for their suburban lives and cookie cutter neighbourhoods and jobs, when they had them, that went nowhere. It was what they were trying to destroy the only way they thought they could, with a scene and an ethos that revelled in nihilism and a music everyone they knew hated. They were somehow getting revenge on everyone he thought, but Doom wasn’t just really sure how. He looked at the logo on the wall and just became even slightly more depressed than he was at the end of most practices.