Bad news, everyone! Chris Holmes, the former guitarist for W.A.S.P. who's best known for being a drunk wreck in Penelope Spheeris's metal documentary The Decline of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years, has decided to give up on America and move to France. He was even forced to comically sell off his barely functioning Firebird. It's sad, I know. What drove him from the land of majestic purple mountains and amber waves of grain into the arms of France, you ask? It turns out that Holmes is abandoning the United States because, in his opinion, black people have ruined heavy metal.
This past Friday, Blabbermouth.net posted an interview Holmes did with Riff-Mag.com about his recent relocation to Cannes, France, and he had this to say:
"Well, unless you're the opposite of me — a hip-hop artist or a rapper — you won't sell in America anymore. There's no rock magazines anymore. The black culture has really… The black culture has taken hip hop to white… The white culture and all the kids act like that; they wear their pants down. I think it's… I'm not 100 percent sure, but I when they go to school and they listen to hard rock, it's called 'pussy music.' [They are told] 'You need to listen to gangster rap.' I think that's what it is."
Let's ignore the vague racism of that comment for a moment and focus on Holmes's ridiculous reasoning. It's no secret that white people enjoy rap, I'll grant him that. But arguing that it's to the detriment of heavy metal's popularity is stupid. Heavy metal as a genre hasn't been truly popular since the 80s, and even then it was only the more accessible hair metal bands that found massive success in the United States. I also question his knowledge of youth culture in the 21st century considering he doesn't actually have any children and is (hopefully) not hanging around school yards in his free time. It's been a while since I was in high school, too, but I'm fairly certain black kids aren't encouraging impressionable white youth to listen to gangsta rap – a style of rap that reached it's pinnacle of popularity with white culture nearly 20 years ago.
Aside from Holmes's dubious reasoning about why no one wants to listen to the terrible music he's making these days, the racism inherent to his thought process is the worst part about his angry rambling. If you dig into some of Holmes's past interviews, though, you'll see he's been using using bigotry to rationalize his professional failures for years. Back in 2011, a Russian website called Heabanger.ru published this interview with Holmes were he expresses the same sentiments in much more repulsive and idiotic terms:
In your opinion, can you reach big success with your new band like you had in the 80s with W.A.S.P.?
No. Music’s changed. I don’t know about here, but in the States it’s all black rap, all white kids are listening to black stuff. Gangsta rap – white kids are into that, too.
Yes, I know, but I don’t like this music.
Yeah, it sucks! It’s so called nigger music. I’ll say that word, I don’t care if niggers are in the room or not to get my opinion, that’s the way it is. Rap is just starting to hit Europe, and it kind of makes me sick, because I don’t like it when kids act like niggers. Is the word “nigger” bad to say here? When you say it in the States, everybody is pissed off.
Maybe I'm punching down by dragging this washed up clown's disgusting opinions into the light, but if he's going to say offensive, moronic things in interviews then he deserves to be exposed for it. Like so many other racist imbeciles, Holmes is responsible for his own downfall. But it's easier for him to blame some imaginary boogeyman – in this case black culture – than to admit that acting like a drunken lout for years is what ruined his career. So farewell Chris, you blabbering cretin. Enjoy France. I, for one, hope you never darken the doorstep of the United States again.
