Ozzy can’t complete a sentence, Axl has spent a decade on an album he can’t finish, Motley Crue is ready for Star Plaza, and Metallica put out a record with a symphony orchestra. Metal is still alive, though. It’s just living in places many don’t notice–like Nightfall Records, an efficiency-sized death metal shop in Mayfair.
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“Everybody was rejecting us,” says the ponytailed, 37-year-old Belau, dressed in black from his socks to his Morbid Angel sweatshirt. “It’s a metal store, mostly death metal or black metal, and it has a label of being satanic. I don’t know why. Most of it’s not. Most of it’s more political.”
Metal survives because it’s a sound track for the clawing disaffection of young men too callow to satisfy their drives for sex and power: grinding, whipsaw guitars tuned to sepulchral chords, bass lines punching harder than fists, singers growling like steel-trapped bears, drumbeats exploding 200 times a minute. The lyrics are about abortion, not birth; rape, not love; damnation, not salvation. The satanism and “war against Christianity” slogans are a way of lashing out at those who’ve achieved contentment.
“If you ask me, there are only two music forms where you’re hearing something new,” he says. “Electronic and dance, and death and black metal. A lot of these bands, they really don’t make much money. It’s the whole idea of making music for the pleasure of it. A friend of mine hung out with the singer from Enslaved when they came to Chicago. He’s going back to Norway and working in, like, a fish-processing factory.”
Nightfall Records is located at 4039 W. Lawrence. The store is open year-round from 1 to 10 Monday through Saturday and 1 to 7 on Sunday, except during the Milwaukee Metalfest (July 26 and 27), when it’s closed. Call 773-725-3530.
