I woke up today with a line from Deicide’s second album, Legion, in my head.
It goes like this:
Satan spawn, the caco-daemon
You know, Legion was the first metal album I ever bought on CD. If you’re brave enough (or metal enough) I’ve embedded my earworm here for you:
After walking around my house alone, grinning like a madwoman, I thought f**k it and went and grabbed the album. Then I put it on the stereo, turned it up to 11, and stood in the back of my loungeroom in front of the speaker stacks (there are 4, they stand taller than me), raised my hands to the sky, and filled myself with the energy of some of the most incredible death metal ever recorded.
Legion was released in 1992. All these years later, it holds up as one of the most evil albums I’ve ever listened to.
No wonder my poor, convent-educated mum had heart-attacks every time I cranked this when I was 15.
Today, I played it at ear-blasting levels before 8 am.
It set the day up for success.
It was so good, in fact, that I texted my best friends about it. They then did the same thing before work.
In fact, one wrote to me:
When you walk into your office with your bottom jaw stuck out and your fist still thumping on your leg with ‘Dead By Dawn’ repeating through your mind, you know it may just be a good day. \m/
The woman who wrote that is the mother of about four kids, a nursing student, a grandmother, and ambitious. She’s gorgeous and has a beautiful personality.
Nobody would suspect she’s an insane Deicide fan like me. That she rolls up the windows in her van and blasts death metal when she’s alone.
But hey you know what: That’s the thing.
Metal has been demonized for as long as I can remember. Paradoxically it is also some of the most complex, incredible, life-giving music ever written. It fills my cells with an energy that I will not attempt to describe.
I recall one day a couple of years ago, I went to a meeting with someone I met doing Business Activities. I played an instrumental track by Melechesh (an Assyrian and Armenian back metal band) on the way.
When I arrived, he said to me:
‘I don’t know what’s up with you, but you are emanating. You’re actually glowing with energy.’
I told him it was the music, that metal really is the fountain of youth. His skeptical expression said everything.
But here’s the thing:
Extreme metal makes me happy. There is nothing in the world that makes my body feel the same way. Nothing on earth sets me on fire the same way. And I figure that anything that inspires a joy that lasts for the length of a working day has got to be good for you.
Why am I waxing lyrical about death metal to you today? Because rocking out is normal to me. My last business was in the music industry, and it was my JOB to rock.
These days, I tend to put on albums that make your mums go crawling back to church, and I listen to them while I work. In fact, all of my very best work was written while extreme metal played in the background.
It’s the kind of thing that would give a Human Resources manager conniptions.
You know, bands that have lyrics like this -
Mutilation - helpless Christians ripped apart
… don’t go down well with normies.
But you know what? There are no Normal People in my business.
There are some clients who would be horrified to learn that I listen to actually Satanic music on occasion. But if they are the kind of people who would fire a company because of what someone listens to, then I wouldn’t want to work with them anyway. I just don’t talk about music with those cats. (It’s safer.)
This week I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the ways of business. It is incredibly freeing when you realise that you can just Be You in your own way, in whatever way makes you happy.
Some people don’t learn it for a long time. They spend so much time cramped inside little corporate boxes that it takes them years to unravel.
So today, here’s my little bit of encouragement for you:
Expand yourself out into your Full You-ness.
Wear that Def Leppard shirt to your next convention.
Put your witchy jewellery on and go to that meeting with someone in a suit.
Rock out to Mayhem like you’re 16 while you work, and take no prisoners while you do it.
Life is short, and if you’re also running your own business, nobody is going to stop you. The worst thing you can possibly do is stop yourself from expressing the things that define who you are.
The rest of the world will just deal. And if they don’t, you don’t want them anyway.