“Gaahl is gay… and still scary as shit”

After hearing someone in class saying that Gaahl from Gorgoroth was gay, I was intrigued.  I knew of a few gay heavy metal musicians.  Rob Halford came to mind.  I was curious to their reception by the metal community, especially in extreme metal.  Now, the Rob Halford show about a month ago at the Ogden theatre was well attended with the usual spread of metal fans and people still love Judas Priest, despite Halford’s open homosexuality.  “Halford's a metal god, even if he loves men” was one post from blacklabelsociety.net.

I went trolling the metal forums looking for any discussion about homosexuality and found plenty.  On UltimateMetal.com I found numerous threads about homosexuality.  I was surprised that it was commonly known but more so accepted that Gaahl was gay, with some people stating that it was the ultimate insult to Christians to be homosexual and therefore, it was more metal.  Aside from the usual juvenile gay comments, there did seem to be some amount of support for the gay musicians: “Good for him! It takes courage to come out like this, and respect for him to do it” said one poster on blacklabelsociety.net about Gaahl.  But what I found most interesting is that after the initial discussion of homosexuality, the fans inevitably turn it into a discourse on the quality of music.  They still think Judas Priest is one the best metal bands ever and they don’t seem to care if he is gay, as long as his music is still metal enough for the fans. 

On the thread “How many prominent black metal musicians are gay” on UltimateMetal.com, one poster even shared his experience of being molested as a child and another poster sympathized that the same happened to his little brother.  I was amazed at the trust and support that was offered on the forum.  Not to mention that it is commonly held that Satyr and Frost of Satyricon are gay.  But even despite the juvenile remarks that will be gathered off of any forum, I was impressed and surprised at the lack of interest in the subject and the support offered to other members and the musicians.

While the short documentary “True Norwegian Black Metal” was interesting it did not touch on the subject of Gaahl’s sexuality. Then Gaahl was awarded the gay person of the year award in Bergen, Norway in 2010 and he accepted the award.  Gaahl did an interview about his homosexuality and he ended with an interesting quote “Mankind is known to be narrow-minded, so... maybe some [will have a negative reaction]. But I guess it will even out the score in a way. I think it will be positive for some and negative for some. It's always good to have some negative as well.”

But I think that there has been less negative reaction overall than he might have suggested, at least there is little evidence of it on the fan run on-line forums.