God, Smack Me

God help me, I like Godsmack.

It's not the kind of thing one should admit lightly. Godsmack is terrible, terrible music, probably the result of warped childhoods and drugs and alcohol. I take solace in the fact that I don't like everything about Godsmack, and I don't like all of their songs. Forgive me.

But that's the half of it. The other half is my concerns about liking Godsmack from a strictly philosophical point of view. Because I don't know whether or not it's okay to listen to their music.

I remember a few years ago everyone was up in arms about Nine Inch Nails. They claimed, among other things, that Trent Reznor was Satan. That, I'm okay with. But they also claimed that his songs glorified sexism, which I'm against. And I'm the kind of namby-pamby who worries about these kinds of things, so I worried that I shouldn't enjoy Nine Inch Nails' music. I was fortunate then, because gynocentric behavior isn't my forte, Nine Inch Nails lyrics are difficult to understand, and I don't really like Nine Inch Nails. But I had to concern myself with it for longer than I really wanted, which was tedious.

Then a few years later I learned that the whole thing was hokum, and that while Trent Reznor may in fact be Satan (probably not, since he's kind of wimpy for Satan; I'm putting my money on Paul Anka), and a jerk, Nine Inch Nails lyrics are in fact talking about things other than the subjugation of women. Please don't write me to tell me that I'm wrong about this. I don't think this; I heard from others, and I don't really want to know, frankly, because of all the trouble it causes me. So it was okay to listen to Nine Inch Nails after all, from a strictly moral point of view.

I had the same problem, briefly, if you can believe it, with Rage Against the Machine: I thought they might be neo-Nazis. The lyrics and rather vocal fan base quickly disabused me of that notion. But the point is that I worried about it.

And more and more, as I listen to Godsmack, I worry the same thing; I know they are right-wing assholes who use their music to dupe young people into joining the Army (or Navy, or whatever) and I'm sort of okay with that, because I don't have to agree with your point of view to enjoy your music, but what I don't know is whether they are really terrible neo-Nazi white-supremacist racist wack-jobs, which is pretty much where I draw the line, difference-of-opinion-speaking. Their lyrics cause me no end of problems, because half the time they are just normally stupid (I told you, I have no illusions as to the quality of Godsmack's music; it's boring, repetative, drab, and awful, and that doesn't stop me from enjoying it in the slightest, something which I can't say about their possible neo-Nazism) but the other half are perturbing. I'd quote them, but I don't want to insult your collective intelligence.

So far, I don't have any conclusive evidence one way or the other, like I do with Rage Against the Machine (definitely not Nazis), System of a Down (definitely not pro-Armenian-genocide), or Hitler (definitely not alterna-rock-metal). Godsmack is actually representative of a whole genre of music which is hard, dark but not satanic, and possibly dubiously moral in a way which I'm concerned about.

The real problem with all of this is that half of my brain says I shouldn't worry about it. "You're a freaking bleeding-heart liberal pinko," says that half. "Why let it bother you?" And the thing is, I don't let a lot of things bother me. I'm sort of fine with the fact that most rock musicians are total creeps who may not write about misogyny but probably practice it, or at least agree with it in principle. Please don't write me and correct me; I'm sure that's not totally true. But most rock-and-rollers lead lives I certainly wouldn't, and I'm not even terribly moral. In fact, I even enjoy good music inspired by a stated worship of dark powers, glorifying all sorts of terrible things. I have terrible taste in music.

So why does the fact that a band I feel guilty about even enjoying simply because they are really terrible might possible hold certain unpleasant views fill me with vague liberal guilt? Possibly because they aren't joking? I don't know, and it's likely I'll never find out. But if Godsmack could clarify their views on racial purity, I would probably enjoy their music more. Or enjoy not enjoying their music more. It's a toss-up, because as I said in the beginning, my enjoyment of Godsmack isn't something of which I am proud.