Band Appreciation: New Yorkment

This is an unusual choice for a band appreciation but New Yorkment are an unusual band. The uniqueness comes not from their music (the opposite in fact), it instead comes form their intent - namely to parody the genre and scene of brutal death metal. Why appreciate a band that essentially mocks my favorite music? Because it's damn funny that's why. For me, most parody fails because it goes too far over the top. Getting bludgeoned over the head with the joke tends to make it less funny. However due the natural extremity involved in brutal death New Yorkment's humor thrives on being over the top. This can be seen in the complete lack of lowercase letters on their myspace page including such utterances as "GORESLAM IN THE HOUSE!!!!!". Their songs also have such amusing names as "INGORGING INGORGITY" and "PIT RIFFMENT". They also lampoon the practice of inventing a meaningless brutal sounding genre name by calling themselves "THUGSLAM GOREPUNCH" among other names (see left).

One of my favorite things they've done is create a myspace page for what seems like hundreds of "Slam Chapters" including ones for Africa and "Killafornia". This of course is making fun of all the NYDM/UKDM/RUDM/TRDM etc. pages which have proliferated recently on myspace.

The music too is worth mentioning. It's pretty much just retarded slams and rather gross guttural vocals. It's like playing baseball (or any sport) with your friends. You suck compared to real players, but you're probably having a lot of fun.

A key part that makes this work for me though is that I sense no malice in it. I could be wrong and admittedly I do not know who made all this and what their intentions are (if you know please enlighten me), but I do not get the sense that the person (people?) behind New Yorkment really hate this music. Instead it's good natured ribbing of the odd idiosyncrasies that have developed in the scene. And besides, if you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

New Yorkment Myspace