john eden
male pale and stale
I think that's all true to a certain extent @padraig (u.s.) - and the shock and outrage wore thin for me some time ago.
A lot of it is comfortable people playing at threat. But there are also people who use this stuff as a kind of working through of horrible incidents in their lives - certainly acts like Richard Ramirez (Black Leather Jesus etc) and Cremation Lilly have been pretty open about their work stemming from some past trauma. Like all these things there is a huge "long tail" of earnest copycats who imitate the most surface elements of it all.
Either way the first (and only?) time I saw Whitehouse was at their early 90s comeback gig and there were some proper psychopathic-looking people in the crowd and some guy received head injuries from a monitor.
These days I am much much more interested in the playful, joyful noise for noise's sake of The Haters than all the nazi/pedo/rape/serial killer accoutrements.
A lot of it is comfortable people playing at threat. But there are also people who use this stuff as a kind of working through of horrible incidents in their lives - certainly acts like Richard Ramirez (Black Leather Jesus etc) and Cremation Lilly have been pretty open about their work stemming from some past trauma. Like all these things there is a huge "long tail" of earnest copycats who imitate the most surface elements of it all.
Either way the first (and only?) time I saw Whitehouse was at their early 90s comeback gig and there were some proper psychopathic-looking people in the crowd and some guy received head injuries from a monitor.
These days I am much much more interested in the playful, joyful noise for noise's sake of The Haters than all the nazi/pedo/rape/serial killer accoutrements.