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Listening to
the “People of the Lie,” or to the live version of “Europe
After the Rain” in which Petrozza delivers an anti-Nazi introduction
to the song, inspiring the crowd to begin chanting “Nazis raus!”
[Nazis out!] spontaneously, one is reminded of one of the basic tenets of
great rock and roll: righteousness rocks harder. It’s the reason
heshers started using “righteous” as a synonym for “excellent”
back in the seventies—if something with genuinely brutal guitars, killer
riffs, explosive drums, and snotty-ass vocals can legitimately claim to
have a point that might further advance human beings as a species, the punches
it delivers to the gut feel a little harder, a little better. I dig Slayer’s
“Mandatory Suicide” as much as any right-thinking American, but
the excellence of its title aside, does “Mandatory Suicide” really
add much to the total good in the world? No, it doesn’t, or it doesn’t
on any signifigant level, anyhow. Mille Petrozzo, on the other hand, while
he’s not Mohandas Gandhi, is nevertheless a guy with the guts to say
to an audience comprised almost exclusively of young white males whose feelings
of anger and alienation make them sitting ducks for nationalist rhetoric:
“Hey, bullshit—those things don’t have anything to do with
what heavy metal’s all about.” And he doesn’t have to write
a stinking ballad to do it, either.
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