They are sure to be disappointing in the flesh. It’s a cliché that ‘artistic types’ – musicians, dancers, actors, painters, and perhaps to a lesser extent, according to the cliché, writers (unless they are Irish, in which case they are appropriately drunk and perhaps violent) – are awful gobshites in person. They are like regular humans but more fallible, more fucked up, more vain, insecure, exhibitionist and so on. In fact, we sort of approve this about them, one of the guarantees of their authenticity as creative is a certain repertoire of dramatic incompetence in conventional interaction. It feeds into the whole Byronic, romantic mystique about The Artist: social dysfunction is proof of genius. Plus we then get to hold them exempt from conventional norms and indulge their peculiarities; we have to take care of them because of their special status. They get away with murder because they give us their Art.

The flipside of this is having to put with interminable bullshit from these people, some of whom are almost autistic savants in their cretinous, gormless stupidity, all the more remarkable when we compare their abnormally disappointing conversational output with their talent. This is why it is better, on the whole, not to have any personal contact with artists (who in this regard are oddly like bureaucrats), and instead to simply enjoy the fruits of their labour at a safe distance, unsullied by the tedium of their actual personalities.

We came across proof of this concept in bumping into Stephen O’Malley from Sunn O))) (and Khanate, and Lotus Eaters, and Burning Witch, and numerous other projects and collaborations) one night in a metal pub. You might not be familiar with Sunn O))) (pronounced sun), but the band is very well respected. Personally, I am not too competent to assess their work (I’ve been too busy listening to brutal death metal, power electronics, gabber and breakcore), but they have done much to push the metal envelope in new directions, incorporating elements of noise and drone, and developing an unmistakably sludgy, doomy, extremely heavy signature sound.

So O’Malley looks like any other American you might have the misfortune of bumping into in metal bars: all in black, long hair, leather jacket. It’s probably not very fair of me to say this, but the upper half of his ‘tache is shaved and I honestly couldn’t figure out why. Perhaps to avoid that perennial problem of the ring pull tweaking the hair when imbibing a beverage from an aluminium receptacle? His face is not so weirdly constructed to have to do this to generate some symmetrical harmony between upper lip and nose or anything. It was distracting at first but I got over it. Upon being introduced to him (I don’t know why, it seemed appropriate, and also I was a bit surprised), I said something like ‘Hey man, fair play, you’re like famous and stuff’, in a vague attempt to demonstrate my respect for creative blah.

Although the conventional mainstream metal fodder being blared through the bar’s speakers at that time was not overwhelmingly loud, O’Malley had me repeat this statement five times, shouting ‘What?’ after each time, and visibly puffing up as I indulged him. It was evident at this juncture that he needs some reassurance and acknowledgement, and any schmuck in a pub who’s heard of him will do. On that evening, I was that schmuck. Nonetheless, I thought perhaps we might glean an insight into influences, creative practices, the struggle of the professional, independent musician, life on the road, whatever. We got an insight all right: an insight into the disappointingly insipid reality of this pretentious walking ego.

A few examples will suffice: there were two clearly quite drunk gentlemen sitting at the bar, inexplicably handing out shots of Mi Wadi (ObliqueEntity, “dilutable concentrate in Ireland – like Kool-Aid”) in a threatening manner to anyone who would take one. I was quite drunk as well of course, but this hardly qualifies as an excuse. So I drank a shot of Mi Wadi, not knowing if it was liquor, spiked, a complicated joke, an act of generosity or what. But one of these guys was wearing a Suffocation t-shirt, and so I said: ‘Suffocation, nice t-shirt’.

This was a cue for O’Malley to wade into an impromptu bit about the classics of 80s metal: specifically the guitarist from Morbid Angel, Trey Azagthoth. Did I know Morbid Angel? I know enough about Morbid Angel to know that I don’t care about them. I said, I remember back in the day there were a couple of guys in my Mechanical Drawing class who were into them, but for me really, I was preoccupied with punk at the time, and these guys just seemed like metal nerds, these guys with Morbid Angel on their schoolbags and their Walkmans I was busy with Crass, anarcho-pacifism, and the revolution/global nuclear war. Are you calling Morbid Angel nerds??? Uh … no … really, what I’m saying is, and I know this is not a very politically correct manoeuvre in certain circles, but I honestly don’t give a fuck about old school death metal anymore. For similar reasons, I don’t listen to Jimi Hendrix, or the Doors, or U2, or Metallica, or any of this watery pabulum really: there are too many amazing unknown musicians around right now for me to continue wading around in this archival muck from the past (O’Malley is actually one of these amazing musicians).

If I’m going to listen to something from more than 20 years ago, it’s probably going to be something horribly obscure; this is what qualifies me as an unremitting music snob. You know, I said, Disgorge are playing in here on November 28th, the legendary and utterly awesome brutal death metal/goregrind band from Mexico. Without Disgorge, there is no Disconformity, no Glossectomy, no Viscera Infest, none of the other amazing contemporary grindcore bands coming out of Japan: pure slamming violent groove. Disgorge tunes only make sense when they’re over; it sounds like a zombie army from the future. Do you know Disgorge? O’Malley probably knows as much about Disgorge as I do about Morbid Angel, but he does say: yeah, you know, those guys are all about Bolt Thrower … agh, Bolt Thrower, here we go again with the Bolt Thrower and the Napalm Death and the Morbid Angel and the Deicide et al.

This is really a classic discursive move among old farts who rated death metal in the olden days but can’t be arsed anymore to keep up with what the young’uns are doing: shut the fuck up, there is no new school without the old guard, and I won’t talk about the new school because (a) I prefer to demonstrate my superior knowledge of this one technical death metal album from 1987, and (b) the old guard did everything (by which is meant, I don’t know anything about the new school because I’m not listening anymore). Well fine, why don’t you go and listen to … Elvis? Muddy Waters? Ma Rainey? When was it exactly that they stopped making music? It was probably just after your 30th birthday.

At just around this juncture there was a particularly cringe-worthy, ‘School of Rock’ moment: AC/DC’s ‘TNT’ came on, and through vigorous head movements, air guitar stylings, rhythmic finger-pointing during the chorus, and the crucial confrontational eye-contact, O’Malley educates me in the ineffable sheer rockdom of AC/DC. I do not need or want this, and I am sorry for him, for myself, and for this stupid world. It is still kind of surprising that this actually happened; a cursory glance at O’Malley’s website indicates an interest in the electronic music pioneer, Eliane Radigue. But hey, maybe we can have Radigue and AC/DC – I mean, probably we should. But I’ll take Disgorge instead of AC/DC, because I have heard enough of the latter and so has everyone else, I’m really not sure what they have to offer anymore. I know that this is music snobbery, but so is knowing who Radigue is, and I kind of want O’Malley to be a snob too, and not just a snob, but a trendy, informed, up-to-date one. Sadly, this is one of the departments in which there is something to be desired. He doesn’t have to know anything about the hordes of anonymous grindcore bands slugging away out there right now, and he can patronise us with his Beavis and Butthead endorsement of AC/DC, because he’s. Sunn O))). Dude. End. Of. And so he does.

Likewise, he tells us about the struggle to make it as a musician. It was hard man, really hard. He had to make a lot of sacrifices. I’m not really sure what this means. Like, satanic sacrifices? He killed his dog? Sold his soul? I guess he means, you know, like, moving away and being broke and stuff. For sure this is a drag. But hey, you know, other people have had to make sacrifices too man. Like, most people don’t get to be musicians, in fact, most musicians have to sacrifice the dream that he is living and become regular plebs like the rest of us. Most of us don’t have his talent or his luck, unfortunately for us. On the other hand, most of us aren’t blessed with his happy ignorance either. Our sacrifices don’t count towards Great Art or grant us special leeway, instead they are precisely what make us the mass: we all, as a matter of routine, lose. Being a loser is easy, Bukowski tells us; everyone does it. And so we do, without bitching particularly about the sacrifices, because no one gives a fuck and we are all in the same boat – quiet desperation and all that.

Later on, he tells us he’s moved to France. Why has he moved to France? Is it because of the cultural sophistication of the French, their appreciation of art and music? I mean, they’re cheese-eating surrender monkeys, why else would an American go there? Well, he’s gone there for three simple reasons: the food, the wine, and the women. French women, O’Malley informs us, will lick your (his) asshole during sex. Alright! That’s what I’m looking for in a relationship! See you in Paris homeboy! I am not qualified to assess the validity of this generalisation about French women, but I guess it kind of figures, the fact that he wants someone to lick his asshole, and that he wants to share this fact with us. Perhaps we can trace the development of his music through his sexual predilections: guitar solos are of course masturbatory and concerned with demonstrating phallic mastery. But the downtuned distortion and low-end rumblings of Sunn O))) – a sort of symbolic sonic diarrhoea – are really kind of anal, not penetrative (that’d be too phallic), but rather concerned with the comforting, but still slightly naughty and thrilling, pleasure of having some French girl lick your asshole. Blowjobs just won’t do anymore; lick my ass baby.

Like they say, enjoy your symptom.