Wolves in the Groan Room

I got this message the other day when I passed on some info about potentially interviewing Wolves in the Throne room to my friend Mary. If you don't know Mary aka Lady of the Palindrome, you should. She's one of the few people who still lives and breathes DIY. She teaches and zine workshop and used to helm Sunset Park's premiere punk house. Battletorn played in that basment. No one was there, but who cares! There was serious fury!



Check out the awesomeness of the The Palindrome, DIY Works, and Binge and Purge to see how real Mary's keeping it in Poughkeepsie.



Mary's in the front, fists in the air, mane a flyin'. That's her usual stance.

Some advice before you cross her path. Do not lend this woman your wizard staff after she'd had a few Sparks. Bad things will happen.

Anyway, here is the geninus response she wrote me:

"hey bev! thanks. its really funny timing, actually! i was just talking about wolves in the throne room.

you'll get a kick out of this actually. I was complaining about wolves in the throne room and how they've spawned all of these godawful indie-dude-turned blackmetal kids. you know exactly who i mean!! super clean cut with glasses and burzum shirts?!? anyway, there are a lot of them at vassar now, which is so ludicrous to me, because when i was a student there nobody listened to fucking anything metal.

anyway, i sort of had a run in with a group of these dudes. i was subbing at WVKR, vassar's radio staiton, and the kid who came in to dj the slot after me was one of said blackmetal hipsters. he and his friends were wearing their big gun street cred shirts - burzum, wiitr, death, emperor. they totally werent metal dudes, though... no bro factor at all, just shitty adolescent snotrags in cool tshirts.they started going through my records and pulling that amateur scenester bullshit, you know... "yeah, that bands ok but their older shit was better." just trying to one up each other and be dumb and pretentious about it.


one of them pulled out a big black record from the crate i brought and was all "oooo, derek, look its your favorite band." the one named derek was like, all serious, "shut up you know i hate that band." which pissed me off, because you KNOW he's only saying that so he can achive the status of the one who disdains the hipster icon instead of worshipping it, and i was getting fed up with him, so i was like, "what the fuck, dude, its not like you're only into metal, you're playing hella for fucks sake, how come you dont like big black?"

and he started doing, in this snivelly little voice, "ooo im steve albini and i only put one mic in the room at a time, ooo i think im so great." and i lost it! i was like DUDE, YOU'RE WEARING A BURZUM SHIRT, YOU CANT POSSIBLY BE ALL THAT CONCERNED WITH RECORDING SOUND QUALITY!!!

he's in a shitty psuedoblackmetal band called stormking. they list among their references wolves in the throne room. dude, what the fuck?"

Maybe no one but me and Mary will think that story is funny, but who cares. You just wish you could be a nerd on our level.

Here are some pictures of Mary trying on size 60" waist mens pants at a thrift store in Colorado Springs. Just because...