HAWAIIAN BLACK METAL

Honolulu-based Kuka'ilimoku are proof that misery, darkness, and filth can be conjured even on golden beaches and beneath sunny blue skies. Inexplicably recorded onto cassette and presumably from several rooms away, their self-titled EP sounds like suffering being shoved through a landline headset. What it lacks in listenability, it makes up for in “boundless disgust and hatred for those unwanted in this dominion”—“this dominion” being the Hawaiian islands, and “those unwanted” being you.

Editorial director Dave Carnie and all the other haoles over at CREEM are unequipped to understand or contend with the brutal screams that come spewing out in opposition to a history of violent cultural destruction, so, being Hawaiian, I was asked to do it for them. Carnie did request that I point out a missed opportunity in naming a black metal band from Hawaii “Lava Rock,” because lava is black, and metal is rock, and I’ll give him that. However, in my research for this article, I’ve discovered quite a few black metal bands of Hawaiian descent and, as much as I’d like it if they were, they can’t all be named Lava Rock. It’d get confusing. You'd think you booked Lava Rock, but you really booked Lava Rock, and then Lava Rock show up and the crowd is disappointed because they don’t rock quite as hard as Kuka’ilimoku.