Hell Bent For Metal makes a gay assessment of Amon Amarth's habit of holding big axes, mighty hammers, and long, long swords in ways that might just be more suggestive than the metal-as-hell intention. Expect lots of innuendo.
In one of the show's regular #YesHomo features, Tom and Matt look at the Viking-obsessed Swedish metallers' exceptional efforts to look metal as fuck – and, from the perspective of two queer men, it turns out that some of these efforts might just erroneously set off more gaydars than was intended.
Whether it's Johan's habit of holding something long and hard near his groin and pointing it at a camera, or their brilliantly spectacular stage show's fantastically West End/Broadway high camp histrionics, the hosts find themselves finding many, many moments that leave them winking at each other and sniggering. And that's without even mentioning the band's fondness for drinking horns full of beer, which leads to them asking many men in the crowd to bring a horn to their lips.
This week's Camp Classic is "STFU!" by Rina Sawayama, a song in which Matt and Tom both see queer relevance, but in very different ways. Matt (who knows way more about the song, and Rina's music in general) sees a number of parallels between the toe-curling bad date depicted in the video, and the experience of meeting people and socialising if you're queer. This leads on to a discussion about the difference between someone who makes an isolated error in how they talk to LGBT+ folk, and someone who keeps using discriminatory language after having it explained to them.
There's also some chat about the horrible dichotomy of people quite happy to consume media that fetishes homosexual sex involving women, but who clearly speak and act in homophobic ways. Tom's also depressed to find the video reminds him of a car crash of a date he himself once went on with someone painfully similar to the bell-end character in Rina's video.
Plus the Hate Crew Gaybar jukebox gets three albums added to it as part of its weekly update. The first is 'Conquering' by British metal band Employed To Serve, who may once have been easy to categorise, but now have evolved so far from their grindcore roots that they're much too distinct to pigeonhole.
Matt then adds 'Eternal Blue' by Spiritbox, the techy-yet-poppy metalcore band who seem on the verge of being bigger than one of the Viking hordes Amon Amarth sing about.
And from the other end of the accessibility spectrum, sludgy funeral doom band Hellish Form's album 'Remains', which Tom has been quite vocally obsessed with, gets added. For the nights when people want to sit alone in the dark, obviously.
Listen to Hell Bent For Metal on Spotify here, listen on iTunes here, or choose one of the other ways to listen here.
