Update on October 27th at 12:00 PM:
L.A. TACO heard back from The Bricks Management regarding this bands associated with Nationalist Socialist Black Metal that played a show at their venue:
"I am the manager at Bricks. I apologize it took this long to answer, but I was unaware of the kind of music, beliefs, and ties these people have, and it took me a minute to find out myself. First of all, I want you to know that we at Bricks DO NOT SUPPORT any kind of hate, we DO NOT follow these bands or music, and we DISAGREE with their beliefs and ideas. The person in charge booked the bands ignoring this delicate issue. Second of all, the reason why these events were not promoted in our page is because those were not our events, and we were not the organizers. We normally only post our events that include Rock en Espanol, Classic Rock, 80’s, Goth and Cumbia. Again, We at BRICKS are completely against violence and hate in any form. Our people at Bricks are like family, and there’s no room for hate, it won’t be tolerated, as a matter of fact, we had canceled all future black metal events, and they will no longer be held at our place."
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Originally published on September 23, 2022.
A metal band with Nazi sympathies was just allowed to play a show in Los Angeles, and the bar didn't seem to want anyone to know.
A story posted on Left Coast Right Watch, a West Coast-based news site dedicated to covering politics and extremism, started by an alumnus from UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, is making the rounds on Reddit for uncovering a band with ties to right-wing extremism.
The controversial band on the $15 show is named Kushfrost, from Jurupa Valley, and plays a style of Black Metal affiliated with National Socialism. Their band logo uses an assault rifle in place of the “K,” and they have songs with lyrics that praise killers celebrated by the right-wing such as Kyle Rittenhouse. A song of theirs titled “Fuck Around and Find Out” features lyrics such as “Swarmed by leftists, all around, I trip and fall, to the ground, The only thing I can do now, Is shoot, my way out! Rittenhouse!” The Left Coast Right Watch also documents that the singer Jonathan Gonzalez is known for openly posting homophobic posts on his social media accounts and that he is part of a growing demographic of Latinos in this subgenre of metal.
The show took place last weekend, September 16th, at Bricks Restaurant & Sports Bar. However, despite the venue’s Instagram and Facebook accounts posting regularly about their calendar and shows they have booked, they did not promote this specific show publicly. The Right Watch also reveals that this is not the first time the venue hosts these kinds of bands with far right-leaning beliefs.
That there are Nazi sympathizers in California’s punk and metal scenes comes as no surprise. A California band, Dead Kennedys, created the iconic “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” song and anti-racist punk philosophy in the 80s, a motto that permanently shifted American punk into a more inclusive space accepting of misfits and outcasts of all backgrounds for generations to come. Nonetheless, racists have always found ways of infiltrating the scene. In 2006, at the British Invasion punk festival in San Bernardino, a rumble that started off between skinheads and punks in the pit turned into a riot.
A search through Kushfrost’s music video archive on Youtube shows grainy videos of the bandmembers wearing ski masks while shooting—and missing—at targets with handguns in the desert. Their Youtube page goes by “Patriarchy Sounds,” and the comment section may raise some eyebrows.
The majority of Redditors in the comment section are concerned that these Nationalist Socialist metal bands, with their lyrics promoting eugenics-inspired genocide, fascism, hate, and violence, are getting bolder and having shows in the L.A. Metro area, such as this Kushfrost show. This is not the first time a far-right-leaning group organized a gathering in the Los Angeles metro area. In 2018, L.A. TACO exposed the Proud Boys secretly meeting up at Highland Park Brewery in Chinatown.
Among these Redditors are those who are already advocating using violence to not make bands like this feel welcome in the scene. It should be addressed that this subgenre of metal does not represent L.A.’s punk and metal scene, which has been made up of mostly people of color for the last four decades.
L.A. TACO reached out to the restaurant for comment as to why they chose not to promote the specific show in question and has yet to hear back.
