White House Declares “Scene Tourism” biggest threat to Metal’s national security.
Washington D.C. – In the closing minutes of President Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday evening, Press Secretary Sean Spicer declared “Scene Tourism” the biggest threat to Metal’s national security, topping both “Censorship” and “Selling Out” as chief concerns for the administration.
“Before we close, I’d like to address an issue of national urgency, one that concerns each and every one of us. These gawdam kids from California are just slapping Bolt Thrower riffs into their trendy hardcore songs now or injecting pointless thoughtfulness into their tremolo riffs without paying their respects,” Spicer noted after a break in answering expected policy questions. “They haven’t taken the time to learn and regurgitate every riff Timeghoul wrote or to mimic Transylvanian Hunger exactly without any hint of innovation. They aren’t copying the classics that have worked for us all along.”
“No,” Spicer continued, getting visibly agitated. “No, they’re coming into our nice, neat little Florida retirement homes with their flannel and ear gauges and mustaches and breakdowns and ruining our scene. They’re scene tourists, and their hipster extremism is going to destroy our genre if we don’t enforce some extreme vetting. Just look at Deafheaven. George Clarke’s looks are a godless affront to metal’s image. And don’t even get me started on the moral degradation evident in their drug-fueld shoegazing. There’s no place for that in our traditional metal.”
The Press Secretary’s comments echoed those made by President Trump earlier in the week regarding tougher scene-immigration standards. “Just look at what these people are doing to their own scenes. You’ve got crowd-killing, you’ve got bright shirts, you’ve got fresh ideas. Those are huge, huge problems,” President Trump said, “And I think it’s about time someone looked at some solutions to these issues. We can’t have all these Black Breath goons running around threatening to make Slaves Beyond Death out of our people. That’s a security issue.”
Mr. Spicer then went on to outline the Administration’s plans for addressing Scene Tourism. “Next week, Mr. Trump intends to sign an Executive Order banning all immigration from predominantly ‘trendy’ scenes, including New Orleans, Brooklyn, and Savannah, while also implementing an express entry system for those with HM-2 pedals. We’re also exploring stricter genre definitions to make enforcement easier. As Mr. Trump promised during the campaign, we’re hiring the best engineers to design genre border walls, and we’ll ask the President of the Southeast sludge scene to pay for them. We can’t have bands like Xibalba coming over the borders and taking all of our best tours. Last, we’re going to step up security at shows. Anyone not wearing camo shorts will be detained.”
Prog Matters, a left-wing music watchdog blog, has expressed concern over the Administration’s comments. “We’ve seen a ton of progress in the last five years, and it would be a shame to reverse all that just because these fascists don’t like what’s popular,” Benedict Gallantine, a representative of Prog Matters, noted. “They want to go back to the status quo of the nineties and undo years of subgenre-ization. They want to live in a pure-genre past that wasn’t too kind to punk or glam or other minorities. Metal was founded as a melting pot of influences, but this Administration is seriously threatening our liberties. It’s just super lame, y’know?”
In contrast, Mr. Spicer’s words seemed to have resonated with the greater extreme metal community. Memes like that below, originally tweeted by Mr. Trump and re-posted to The Facebook page OSDM-ONLY, were greeted with comments of outrage from classic metal fans. One subscriber, Tom Thornton, commented, “Back in my day, the riffs were real, and no one cared if it was meth and the Confederate Flag that inspired them. Now all these PC kids from the hardcore scene are talking about feminism and moshing all wrong. What happened to our metal?”
The Administration’s new focus on Scene Tourism is a distinct contrast to the previous Administration’s emphasis on genre plurality. “We feel that Mr. Obama spent too much time trying to restrict and censor harmful imagery in metal and didn’t do enough to keep the real threats from creeping in from outside music styles. Mr. Trump cares about the state of extreme metal and wants to make sure his constituents get the same recycled riffs that their parents and their parents’ parents enjoyed.”
“If it ain’t black fvckin’ metal or old-school death metal, it’s un-American, and we’re going to stop it,” Mr. Spicer concluded.
UPDATE 3/01/2017: The Associated Press is now reporting that various media outlets, such as Pitchfork and Brooklyn Vegan have been denied entry to future press conferences. More details as the story develops.
