Shirt Stains: Camo Toe
Cam-owned.
I don’t think it’s a big stretch to say that most metalheads have, at some point, owned a piece of camouflage-colored clothing. Sometimes it’s a shirt, maybe a hat, but usually it’s camo pants. There’s nothing wrong with that. Camo is cool on principal. Makes you look tough without having to invade another country and getting your bits and pieces blown to bits and pieces. Heck, not that long ago places like Abercrombie were selling camo shorts. Naturally, bands have created shirts using camouflage print. The results are as clear as day.
Gideon – Camofluage for Jesus
Gideon is a Christian tuffguycore band on Facedown Records. JC would have wanted you to punch people in the back of the head in the pit. I think it was in xJohn316x. When they’re not moshing for Mary and spinkicking for St. Augustine, Gideon is putting out a camo shirt covered in white print. Look at all that writing! It totally defeats the purpose of having camouflage when you’ve got more white on your chest than Asa Akira.
Let’s look at what the shirt actually says: “-ALABAMA HARDCORE- .GIDEON. We need to get back to the love we used to know MM G XII”. That’s just the front. The back has “.A SENSE OF. FAMILY THE FEELING OF HOPE Facedown Facedown Records Records”. Try to say all that with a mouthful of the body of Christ. For good measure, we get the typical hardcore band shirt “live photo” splash. I do like that it talks about family when the picture looks like the singer is punching a kid in the face. Even if this wasn’t a camo shirt, it would still end up in Shirt Stains.
Nails- Grrrr ruh ruh ruh ruh!
I’m sorry guys. I know Nails is the official band of all things ToH. Please don’t hurt me. It’s not the design of the shirt that’s the problem. Whereas the Gideon shirt above is a fail no matter what color the shirt, this design is actually cool. We’ve got a nice snarling wolf-beast and some barbed wire. That’s metal in any ball park. The band name is at the top in big letters. I could do without the schlong-inducing back quote, but it’s not that bad. Unfortunately, the camouflage color just brings the whole thing down.
The colors make the band name harder to read which is something you don’t really want considering that shirts are walking advertisements. It even makes the badass snarling wolf-beast look like he’s sneezing. Does Fenris have a case of the sniffles? It may seem like minor complaints, but it’s just enough to get some fans to think twice before buying it.
Carcass – DeciBLAAAAUUUGGGHHHHHH
Oh dear. This has to be some sort of mistake. Maybe it’s a bootleg or just an approximation. Maybe it was created by a disgruntled t-shirt artist. Perhaps a curse was placed upon it by a witch’s coven. Whatever the case, again, camo manages to ruin an otherwise perfectly fine shirt. It’s got the Carcass logo (which has always been a little hard to read if you’re just quickly looking at it) and that cool little symbol with the tools and junk. Does it need to be on a camo shirt? Hell no! No army in the word would use that.
The back is a little weird as the dates run over the giant Decibel advertisement. What happened there? Was it to take away from the fact that it’s already hard enough to read since it’s printed on camouflage? It’s not like there were too many dates and they had to cram everything in like a tour shirt turducken.
So who gets the blame for this: Carcass or Decibel? I’ll blame Decibel mostly because I don’t like their reviews. “LOLOLOL this band has a weird name LOLOLOL 6/10”. Thanks guys. Top notch stuff. Good thing print is dying and the internet gives us fine places like ToH for reviews.
Suicide Silence – Hidden Hard-on
There really isn’t much to say about this shirt. There’s no reason it should be camo. It’s a dark, muddy camo color which may be better for hiding in the woods. Good thing there’s bright white lettering on it. Nothing special about the front, just the sploogey band logo. You may think I’m being too creative with my description, but check out the back of the shirt.
“LIVE LIFE HARD”. There’s no way that someone can look at that and not giggle like a school girl. The mind reels at all sorts of silly situations regarding that saying. Maybe a guy with a throat tattoo popping some Viagra and windmilling his ween around in the pit. How about a nice young lady sporting a dildo helmet and stage diving? Or maybe we just get a swole grandpa smashing posers and whippersnappers who won’t get hard, stay hard, and live life hard.
We Came As Romans – We Left As Bros
We Came As Romans is a WarpedTourcore band. That’s about all I can say about them as they fall under a pile of other similar bands that I completely ignore. Just like I See Stars, Pierce The Veil, The Smashening, Of Mice & Men, The Word Alive, Stars Taste Like Glass, Your Demise, Glamour of the Kill, etc. I made up two of those band names and I’ll bet some of you can’t guess which ones are fake. We Came As Romans don’t really appeal to the “metal” metal crowd, particularly when they get tour support for a band like this. Okay, enough stalling.
This shirt completely defeats the purpose of camouflage. Yeah, I know, so do the other shirts in the list, but this is the worst offender in terms of size and sheer “HEY LOOK AT ME”-ness. That’s totally a word. Look it up. Maybe if the shirt wasn’t camo it would be okay. Maybe if the logo wasn’t so big it would be okay. Maybe if the logo didn’t have multiple fonts it would be okay. Maybe if there wasn’t the random “initials in a cross” deal it would be okay. Yeah, and maybe monkeys might fly out of Ted Cruz’s butt.
