#gone to the wolves

[seashellsoldier]

“Gone To The Wolves” by John Wray (2023)

I really, truly wanted to love this novel. Ilana Masad gave a glowing review for NPR (https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173613977/john-wray-novel-gone-to-the-wolves-heavy-metal-book-review), which only heightened my interest and led me to purchase the e-book through Barnes & Noble.  

As a traumatized and misfit kid of the ‘80s who embraced heavy metal in ’85, then thrash in ’87, then speed in ’88, then crust and grindcore and death metal after my very first concert—the Milwaukee Metal Fest of ’89, then . . . just a couple of years later as the “Grunge Gold Rush” took off . . . all subgenera of what is now a vast spectrum of metal musicianship, I felt this story might resonate deeply within my grey matter of memories. Back then, metalheads were truly outcasts just about everywhere, the geeks and freaks and broken things that slithered into our own cloistered cliques who haunted the back of the cafeteria and found solace in empty parking lots far away from the football and basketball games, wanting to disappear and be left alone with our music and comic books and hollowed-out dreams. Finding kinship in any form was something akin to fate; the dark gods smiling on their chosen bastard children for some blissful moment. Tape-trading was the ONLY way to discover new music that wasn’t on garbage FM rock stations, until Columbia House started having a metal insert in their monthly mailings. There were the magazines, but we never read any of them. Nobody had the money to piss away, or the monomaniacal fascination to toss money at them. I didn’t even know about MTV’s Headbangers Ball until about ’90 and only then because my girlfriend was babysitting at a house who could afford cable. 

I remember that hallowed night in a cavernous building in the dead of winter watching some 30 bands blast us to shreds in Milwaukee, most of whom I had never heard of before then. We were kids amongst a horde of leather-clad giants handing us beers and drags from joints and pushing pills in our hands (“just say no!”). Nuclear Assault nuked the place. I remember being deafened by a wall of speakers as Judas Priest opened up with a long drum solo for their Painkiller tour in Chicago, while Rob Halford languidly rolled out on his Harley as another curtain opened to reveal a second wall of speakers. I remember climbing a plastic construction fence to get to the sound booth in the rafters as Rage Against the Machine whipped the crowd into a frenzied mob on the outskirts of Honolulu. They tore the place apart. I remember seeing Metallica in Bangkok in an open-air arena with what felt like a million others who spoke a different language. I remember seeing Type O Negative, Danzig, and Ronnie James Dio-fronted Black Sabbath play on Halloween 1994, and the hurried drive back for the graveyard shift with some kindred spirits with ears ringing and the afterglow lasting long past dawn. I remember seeing Project 86 at what seemed like a 1950s cocktail lounge in Chevy Chase, Maryland, as they thunderously evoked their Songs to Burn Your Bridges By, and as I prepared to go to Iraq to save hallowed democracy from the evils of Islam (and cash in on their oil fields). I remember seeing Slipknot at a filthy toilet-bowl bar in downtown Des Moines looking like lunatics who just escaped from the asylum and raided a cheap costume store (by this time I was wearing earplugs to concerts big and small). I remember seeing the almighty GWAR, alien overlords that they are, in Minneapolis, drenching the crowd in fountains of fake bile and blood and semen. I remember thousands of us screaming “God hates us all!” over and over at a Slayer show to the silent, impotent, starry and frigid firmament in Sacramento. I remember seeing Obituary on Leap Day 2020, as the world soon succumbed to the worst pandemic in a hundred years, and the millions of obituaries which followed in its wake. I remember, quite recently, Body Count turning their mosh pit into a furious meat grinder with energy I’ve not witnessed ever before, nor probably will ever again. The hate is real, America. It is so tangibly real. So many other venues, tours, and bands with less-permanent memories are held within my mind, for as long as that lasts. Metal music is infused within my apostate, heathen, godless life-blood. It will accompany me beyond, to whatever end awaits us all. Most likely boring, open-mawed Oblivion. 

The chord that rang out was familiar enough—an overdriven minor triad—but what stood [Kip’s] hair on end was how it felt. Distorted guitar had always had a certain temperature to him: it had always, no matter how vicious the music, been a sound he understood in terms of heat. Embedded with that warmth—hidden inside it—lived a cryptic form of life-affirming power. Deicide and Morbid Angel played their riffs to raise the dead, not to inter them. That was the nature of the exchange, the secret truth of the transaction, however bleak the songs might sound to virgin ears. Rage and violence and pain instead of nothingness (pp. 226-227, Nook). 

Wray captures this environment—this “subculture”—incredibly well, even if his chosen trio is nothing like anyone I ever knew, wedged as we were between the steel mills and iron works of East Chicago and Gary, Indiana, and the endless cornfields of everywhere beyond. Florida backwater it was not, but neither did anyone have the depth of knowledge in guitars, amplifiers, band members, and vocabulary like Leslie does at such a similar age. Doesn’t matter. I was the quiet, awkward, rage-filled wallflower . . . and metal music filled the void in my damaged soul. 

Masad has understandable issues with the lone female character, Kira, but at the same time the “beautiful but broken girl from a white-trash home” was a familiar trope from my high-school hellscape. No circus-freak father required. Normal blue-collar fathers were awful enough. My white-collar Vietnam Vet father was simply a haunted monster no bottle of bourbon could quell. Connie and Angie and Kim and Shannon and Crystal fit the bill all-too perfectly with Kira, if tragically. Masad may want to do some research on childhood trauma and its effects on developing brains. I have no idea if any of them are alive today, but I have no recollection of any of them speaking to the depth of personality that Kira does either. We didn’t grow up online though. We had, at best, five or six television stations to gawk at. Some regrets can never be resolved. Some mistakes never forgiven. 

Gone To The Wolves is theatrically broken into three parts for our wayward trio: the Florida Death Metal scene, the dying LA Glam and rising LA Thrash scene, then—oddly—the Norwegian Black Metal scene. It’s the Scooby-Doo third part that collapsed my nostalgic high, but I understand Wray’s supposed Dan-Brown desire to make a “thrilling finale”. For me, it falls flat by stepping way outside plausible reality (but I’m primarily a nonfiction reader so grant me some leeway if this is the norm these days). Too many people need endorphin bumps every two minutes or so thanks to tech addiction. I do not. I would have liked to see our troubled trio mature in the early 90s, like most of us did to one degree or another. Some died early of course, others weren’t true metalheads to begin with. We die-hards are devoted to the bitter end. 

While I can’t definitively identity with any character in this book, Wray opens to door to so many vibrant arteries of our subculture’s primordial existence that we can—at the very least—sympathize with them. We knew people who resembled them. The lost souls, the drug addicts, the lovelorn, the bipolar-depressive violent. I have to assume early heavy metal coming-of-age stories are rare. Nobody truly cared about us, and they still don’t. So maybe we can call this The Perks of Being a Wallflower meets Lords of Chaos? 

Nevertheless, completely enjoyable, to a fault. 

[theartingace]

By lamp and moonlight we saw them, but what we saw wasn't quite what should be

[grahamcore]

rip will graham you would have loved animal crossing

[alfredosauce50]

Dancing with Wolves

[Yandere Viking! Denmark x reader]

Synopsis: Mathias is set on sailing to a better home before the baby is born, a place with eternal Spring where his child will not know the cold of Winter. After a month adrift at sea, he finds the land of his dreams and a discovers a new continent. The North Americas. There, he meets a village of natives who have already claimed it, and eventually, the sagamaw’s son, Allen. You develop a close friendship with him, but Mathias tells him to stay away for his own good. They’re two worlds apart and equally as different, and end up challenging each other on every aspect in life. So as enlightening as it has been for both sides, there’s a reason why they’re separated by an ocean, and Mathias stays true to his path to being the King of Danes.

Word count: 8, 791

Rating: M for slight NSFW

“Arrows that blot out the sun. Seas of soldiers. That is real. War is real. You need to move forward, in our direction.”

🎃 The story is on my Patreon in the bolognaise tier

🎃 Or $5 on Ko-Fi

Because this story is not a part of the main trilogy, I’m not publishing it here, but it’s available as a spin-off.

I wanted to say a big thank you to my patrons for their patience and ongoing support. It means the world to me, truly. To know there are people out there who really enjoy my work and keep showing that helps me tremendously. Especially Tullah, who stuck around even after such a long period of inactivity. Thank you so much for keeping this spark alive. I hope you know how important you are to my inspiration and motivation. You were the one who suggested this story a few years ago, after all. I will also be eternally grateful to any new members on my Patreon, or new supporters on my Ko-Fi. Your generosity will not go unnoticed.

❤️

[happyk44]

Wolf packs are largely familial so it's really interesting how Jason's family throughout the years keep abandoning him.

Chronic lone wolf syndrome.

[ryuki-draws]

No worries, Plex still actually CAN practice medicine. Well, technically - under supervision of a doctor with both eyes still intact. Before joining LL he was regularly assigned as a nurse to doctors new to the profession, so they felt more at ease having someone experienced around while in charge of everything for the first time.

[catsnkittens64]

lost, farther and father away.

[smolsleepyfox]

Powerwolf @ Mitsubishi Electric Halle, Düsseldorf

31.10.2023

[zincbart]

And I'm ready to hurt for this

I know exactly what this is

Meet Jan Stone! One of my newest characters, been really enjoying him in an RP recently.

[peetsmoss]

Well, movies are my life blood and if I don't watch at least one fucked up movie a week, I'll perish.

[bloodstainedmuzzle]

[ I was born to run, I don't belong to anyone. ]

Days Gone Deacon St. John [ 5 / ??? ]

[ciceroniantrash]

the funniest thing about being concussed during finals is that I wrote a podcast script for a final on classical allusion in TMG music BEFORE I realized I was concussed…I went back to it yesterday…buddy what the FUCK where you saying

[echo16reads]

And here we have the difference between Percy Jackson and Jason Grace. (On the surface level and how other people view them)

[ottitty]

Me: Passes out outside of my home at 2am again.

Harvey, fishing 1,000g out of my pocket and ditching me in my bed:

[bmpmp3]

its important to watch a new movie or read a new book sometimes. largely because 1) its nice to experience all the art this world has to offer but also 2) you might be able to find new scenarios to imagine your OCs in

[im-secretly-mothman]

Made a werewolf sona for Artfight 2023 (and because I want to be a feral little monster that runs around in the forest)