I’m not just a fan of metal, I’m also fan of the culture that surrounds metal. The culture surrounding metal tends to be very open, nonjudgmental, and chill. Think of it as the opposite of the culture surrounding the Republican Party. In addition to have a kickass culture metal also enjoys a long history of epic trolls, especially against those who would try to appropriate metal without being involved in metal. H&M recently licensed merchandise from Metallica and Slayer. Since H&M really isn’t involved in metal in any way it was almost guaranteed that it would be trolled. And it was. It was trolled hard:
Here’s what happened: H&M began selling heavy metal-themed items displaying band names like Mortus, Motmros, Blast, Grey, YVAEH, Lany, Crepuscular and more. The thing is, none of these bands actually exist, so a collective of metal fans decided to prank H&M (and in turn the rest of the world) by actually creating these bands.
They made a mock record label called Strong Scene Productions and devised biographies for the supposed bands. They even recorded some fake songs.
And just to make H&M look really bad, the pranksters made the fictional bands in question as distasteful as possible. For example, a fake bio for Lany is decorated with Nazi imagery, the cover of a supposed Motmros LP called Holocaust Tomb shows a priest being assaulted by a phallus-wielding demon, and a Crepuscular press photo shows a dude with a gun and bullets.
These bands even have some fake songs. Below, watch a trailer full of fake music, press photos and more. It’s part of a playlist with a number of fake songs, including one by YVAEH called “Vaginal’s Juice Driping into Cadaverous.”
One of the dudes who has claimed responsibility for this prank is Henri Sorvali of the Finnish bands Moonsorrow and Finntroll. He spoke with Noisey about the campaign.
Then the guy is in a band named Finntroll you have to expect some epic trolling. As a pervasive troll myself I find myself only able to tip my hat at this. It was fantastically executed.