The battle vest is perhaps a tacky, dated hunk of collage art to the absurdist but for the absurd themselves it is a show of support… no, a literal plastering of support to be worn by folks who’re often nowhere near such peacocks in their daily lives. It’ll be a difficult thing for the privatized fan of heavy music to understand, particularly if you’re not prone to attend live gigs (and especially festivals) as years of showing up and dumping money into the travelers who’d gift your city with their noise builds a confidence in the perpetual rewards of preserving that safe space for the freak and free-thinking independent. Though the outsider might see the festival going, battle-vested heavy metal fandom as a breed stuck in the glorious raunch of 70’s and 80’s fashion these are in fact expressions of tribal traditions– Monuments to the lasting foundations of ‘scene’ and community built by outsiders into empires that’d birth world class musicians, household names, and every possible niche for the all-inclusive (and sometimes ultra-exclusive) banner of heavy metal.
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