hindi ako magpapaliwanag dahil hindi ‘to prisinto

Just this afternoon I was asking friends if they had any death metal mp3s.

I don’t exactly look like someone who listens to death metal, meaning I do not in anyway channel Ozzy. There are certain times, though, that I feel the urge to blast my eardrums off with barely comprehensible lyrics and hell-raising screams. It’s the next best thing to screaming your own head off, anyway. It’s not like there’s any place in Manila where I can just scream it all out and not get hauled off to Mandaluyong immediately. There’s some sort of catharsis in hearing someone else scream out his anger at the world at large, making up for my own inability to let out steam.

Or maybe “steam” is a little too tame for what I’m actually feeling right now.

I did find a few songs by Atreyu, then made up for the lack of Black Sabbath material with punk rock’s The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Add a little bit of The Ramones and voila! I was technically good as new.

Or a little less pissed at the very least.

My love affair with rock actually began with death metal, having found myself seated beside serious metalheads. Back in the days (wow, now that’s extremely ancient), we had the dinosaurs known as walkmans, and my classmates would randomly force feed me music from Metallica and Black Sabbath. The occasional Led Zep was always welcome, too. Soon enough, I found myself gravitating towards less screaming and more classic rock, so it was goodbye Ozzy and hello Jim Morrison. Despite that, it seems I haven’t really outgrown the need for all that angst and raspy screaming.

I can’t really explain what got me so worked up today, and I don’t think anybody can force me to do so anyway. In any case, I plead guilty to the fact that I have these terrible mood swings, though I’d never get caught dead admitting this stuff in person (yes, I know, I technically just did, but what the hell).

I’m not really sure if the people around me can notice it, but I can’t help but get these snaps here and there and sometimes, the temper really slips through the cracks and rears its ugly, bitchy head. Anger is a family trait, I guess, so blame it on my DNA or something. I’ve done my best to keep it all under wraps, though, so I made up this rule to just shut up and step out when I’m seriously, seriously, seriously pissed.

The thing is, when I bitch back it means I’m not really mad. Most of the time, it just means I still have enough humor in me to snap back at you, and everything’s good. It’s when I’m quiet that you have to be extra careful, because I could just be hungry enough to bite your head off. I sort of think I get this crazy Hannibal look in my eyes when I’m really pissed, but I can’t be too sure because I’ve never been angry and in front of the mirror at the same time.

I can’t just snap and break people’s necks whenever I feel like it. I have no choice because behaving in the way I’d really like to sometimes could either: (a) get me ostracized; or (b) land me in city jail. So what do I do?

I shut up and put up.

But keeping anger bottled up is dangerous to your health, or so they say. Most of the time, I just get death metal dudes to scream it out for me, and one way or another, I feel much, much better.

PS: Anybody who has suggestions regarding bands that can fulfill my future death metal needs?

This entry was posted on Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 10:39 pm and is filed under music, personal, rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.