Hell Bent For Metal are joined this week by Yasmine Summan, the music journalist, social media guru, and TikTok star, most famous for their work at Altpress and as one-third of the podcast 'On Wednesdays We Wear Black'. They talk to Tom about being out as non-binary in metal and their experiences of people's open-mindedness about their gender – in particular about how, following an episode of their podcast where they fielded listener questions about being non-binary, it always comes as a surprise that people in our scene are open-minded about things like this.
This follows directly on to a discussion about racism and sexism in metal and alternative music (and also the music industry), and about how Yasmine's experience of that is a big part of why they continue to be surprised at open-mindedness. They also talk about how, if you're part of a minority, there's an added weight of expectations, and that people expect you to avoid the human mistakes that cishet white men make to an unreasonable extent. There's also some chat about the foibles of social media platforms, about what Yasmine and Tom will do if their respective podcasts win at the Heavy Music Awards, and a novel suggestion about what Tom should do with his beard.
There's also a bumper crop of new music for this week's visit to HCGBs, with three albums getting included. As promised last week, 'Close', the latest album by Italian expansive, varied doom project Messa is joined by 'Vexier', the new record from Swiss shoegazy, black metal-tinged post-metal band E-L-R, as Tom and Matt's individual picks for the jukebox.
But there's also the completely inevitable inclusion of 'Impera', the new album from heavy metal's most gay-friendly Satanic pop-tastic band, Ghost. And somehow that conversation ends in sane time, and with neither of them breaking into a sing-along. (Yes, the bar was only serving soft drinks that day.)
Plus there's just a little bit of chat about Hell Bent For Metal being one of the finalists in the Best Podcast category at the 2022 Heavy Music Awards. If you want to vote for the podcast, you can do so here.
Listen to Hell Bent For Metal on Spotify here, listen on iTunes here, or choose one of the other ways to listen here.
