Racist, Transphobic, Fascist Black Metal Band to Play at Neck Of The Woods This Saturday

On January 24, there will be a black metal show at Neck Of The Woods featuring Bezaliel, an "occult black metal" band that may not seem like Nazis on the surface, but they still have acted in an extremely problematic way. The flyer is attached below. The names of the other bands are airbrushed out, as it is unknown whether the other bands on that slate, Sinister Sounds Booking, or Neck Of The Woods know the full extent of their toxic Trojan Horse fash behavior.

The drummer of Bezaliel, who goes by Lord Mephisto, also plays in another black metal band Cardinal, who has a member, Donovan Daly, who is literally famous in the scene for saying the N word and only fucking up Nazis because they say the quiet part out loud. In addition, Lord Mephisto is also in a pornogrind band called "Fetus Fucker", which has song lyrics glamorizing pedophilia. The Venn diagram of Nazis and pedos is a circle.

Several of the guys from Bezaliel and Cardinal are well known for saying the N word, in fact, one time, I had ordered a 20 piece meal from McDonalds and they said "Go easy on the Chicken McN***ies" (rhymes with "Chicken McRiggies"). In addition, they use a lot of homophobic, transphobic and ableist slurs.

Bezaliel (as well as Cardinal) booked a show for 80s death metal band Master on October 10 at Victory Stables in Oakland. That day, Master was supposed to play with death metal band Ripped To Shreds at 924 Gilman, however Ripped To Shreds (a band of all people of color whose leader has called out white supremacy in the local metal community) dropped off a few weeks before after Master played a festival with several neo-Nazi metal bands, including Arghoslent, whose lyrics glorify the slave trade.

In the days leading up to the show, members of Bezaliel, Cardinal, and other edgelords who will swear they are not Nazis, but enable them were relentlessly attacking Ripped To Shreds, 924 Gilman (who are a venue with an anti-oppression framework), and writing insensitive parodies of the Neimoller poem (ie: "first they came for the pornogrind, but I didn't speak out because I wasn't a gooner"). They also claimed that a planned show by Absu at Great American Music Hall was cancelled because of them firing a member for coming out as transgender (it is not known whether that was the reason) They even (privately) said that an indigenous led Black Metal band that was headlining a show happening at the same time was "woo woo Inj*n poser shit" (think racist war whooping from old movies).

The flyer for the Master/Bezaliel/Cardinal show had several dog whistles, including Iron Crosses and "No Weirdos, No Poseurs, No Boneheads". I think that they couldn't say what they really thought because they would get sued for discrimination. A transgender woman actually got kicked out of that show for discriminatory reasons.

Said show was put on by a shadowy promoter "Street Shark", which nobody had ever heard of before and who has not booked a show since.

It should be known that many bands who don't claim to be Nazis but are problematic tend to drop dog whistles, such as the aforementioned iron crosses and them using Satanic Warmaster as a music bed for an Instagram post. Mamzer Records, which was founded by Lord Mephisto and who house Bezaliel, Cardinal, and other edgelords claim to specialize in "occult black metal", which may or may not be a fascist dogwhistle, and also claim to worship at the Cult of Erebus (a strange rabbit hole involving Nazis in Antarctica). Also, a person at Mamzer was seen wearing merch of NSBM band Bone Awl.

I have been brown and around for too long to let this fly. Beating up Nazis is meaningless unless you are truly anti-fascist and not doing it to sound macho and to stop people from saying the quiet part out loud. Bezaliel is one part of a fascist sleeper cell infecting the music community and they must be dealt with.

If there are 9 people at the table and one of them is a Nazi, then 9 of them are Nazis