Krishnacore: It was a non-accident waiting to happen. It was inevitable that sooner or later the straightedge kids dedicated to purifying their bodies and minds would come around to the notion of purifying their souls as well.
Take Ray Cappo (aka Raghunath Das), the lead singer of New York City straightedge band Youth of Today: “Although we were straightedge, I felt a calling to improve my life even more,” Raghunath said in an interview. “Because to really advance in spiritual life, you have to go deeper than just being good—you have to become a transcendentalist.”
I’m not convinced that being straightedge makes you good, but I am prepared to say that Krishnacore could probably only have been born in New York City, Ground Zero of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s introduction of Krishna Consciousness to the West in the 1960s.
Not surprisingly, Prabhupada found his first converts amongst the youth counterculture. He liked to say he was “turning hippies into happies.” Hardcore kids would seem to have been a harder sell, but straightedge fans of bands like Minor Threat and 7 Seconds were ripe for conversion to the Bhakti movement.
The difference between the hippies and the hardcore kids was this: most of Prabhupada’s hippie devotees renounced rock music as a materialistic and decadent symptom of spiritual sickness in our present Age of Kali Yuga, the Hindu Age of conflict and sin, which, if you’re keeping score (and I know I am), should end in exactly 428,000 years. I have a big Post-Kali Yuga party planned. You’re welcome to come.
The hardcore Krishna kids, on the other hand, haven’t given up their music, and far from condemning Cappo and his like for embracing Western decadence, his spiritual betters actually encouraged him to carry on, because they understood that playing hardcore could be a viable conduit for finding converts.
I’m not a Hare Krishna, in part because it’s too puritanical for my tastes and in part because the movement has had its fair share of scandals, scoundrels, and scamsters over the years. John Joseph of the Cro-Mags (the Godfathers of Krishnacore) had plenty to say about the malfeasance he witnessed in his early Krishna years, although he still adheres to the faith.
And he’s hardly alone—I have devotee friends who continue to worship Krishna but have walked away from the official organization, The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, for some of the same reasons. But I’m definitely a fellow traveler—I find much to admire in the Bhakti faith, and the friends I mentioned above are wonderful people.
But here’s the point I want to make about Shelter, and why they do nothing for me despite the fact that I consider myself sympatico to Krishna. I’ve witnessed a few more joyous things than the music and the ecstatic dancing that take place when Krishnas come together. And what strikes me when I compare a Krishna service to a Krishnacore show is that the latter doesn’t strike me as a joyous affair.
Maybe I’m just jaded—so far as I’m concerned, hardcore hit a dead end in the early eighties, and its later practitioners, such as Shelter, are just regurgitating a sound that stopped being interesting at around the same time Black Flag reinvented itself as Black Sabbath Jr.
Which brings us back to Shelter, formed in 1991 by Cappo and John Porcell (aka Paramananda Das) to play hardcore wrapped in saffron cloth. Sound itself has always played a vital role in Bhakti yoga—the “transcendental vibration” resulting from chanting the holy names of Krishna is believed to be divine. Those of the Bhakti faith believe there’s no separation between the chanted holy names of Krishna and Krishna himself. God IS a sound—now there’s a radical concept. Hence, the emphasis on chanting.
And Cappo sees an intrinsic link between this chanting and the devotional music, which is also seen as divine, and the secular music Shelter plays. I don’t, and the difference is simple—the chanting of the holy names is a love offering, while Shelter’s songs are lectures set to music. There’s a world of difference.
The former, especially during Bhakti services, is a joyous affair, a pure expression of Love and Devotion. A lecture, on the other hand, is just a lecture, and while the hardcore fans of Shelter may find the band’s live shows to be joyous affairs, what I hear when I listen to Shelter is the same thing I hear when I listen to straightedge bands like Minor Threat and SSD—puritanical sermonizing.
And Shelter is no Minor Threat. Their music is generic stuff and simply not in the same league, and as I’ve said before, hardcore was largely passe by the time Shelter came along—it was a dead horse, and beating it with the Bhakti stick wasn’t going to bring it back to life.
Or perhaps I should say it isn’t, because Shelter still reunites on occasion. But they hit their high point way back in 1995 (long after hardcore’s sell-by date) with their sixth studio release, Mantra. And it should be noted that the Shelter of Mantra is no more a classic hardcore band than most of the groups that came along after hardcore’s first wave.
There’s a lot of metal in their sound, and they flirt with rap-metal (alas) in songs like “Civilized Man,” “Not the Flesh,” “Message of the Bhagavat,” and “Metamorphosis.” And they lean toward melodic punk-pop (think Green Day) in songs like “Here We Go,” which is probably their most popular tune. “Mantra” is a Nirvana/Fugazi fusion; “Letter to a Friend” is a slow one with massive guitar riffs and a big Stone Temple Pilots chorus. Shelter are all over the place, but no matter where you land, what you hear is second-hand.
Abstinence from drugs, alcohol, meat, and sex (“We were probably the first celibate rock ‘n’ roll band to tour the world,” said Raghunath in an interview) is fine if that’s your thing, but I’ve never liked being hit over the head with the lifestyle choices of other people, and that’s the besetting fault of Mantra.
From opener “Message of the Bhagavat” (which opens and closes with brief singing in Hindi of passages from the Bhagavad Gita) we get hit not with a message of love for all living things but hectoring rhetoric, threats even: “In illusion, in confusion,” sings Cappo/Raghunath, “And don’t think there won’t be any retribution.” Where’s the love, I ask you? And he even gives us a kind of homework assignment, and not one you’ll be able to finish in five years’ worth of study halls: “History of the universe, 18,000 verses for our edification.” Aw, come on! Can’t I just read the Satanic Verses instead?
As for “Civilized Man,” well, Cappo doesn’t understand them, although I would argue that anyone who uses the word “gourmandize” in a song is more civilized than he should be. And a less good lyricist than he thinks. I don’t eat cows either, largely because I like them more than I do people, but I don’t preach about it in song with lyrics along the lines of “Well there’s blood on the hands of man yet we don’t sympathize, meateater kills the cows they just depersonalize to justify their own lust as the helpless die.” Talk about your mouthfuls. And I wouldn’t say meat eaters are looking to justify their lust—they want a cheeseburger. And the line, “The 4 foods group is just western medicine quackery,” cracks me up.
And so it goes. “Appreciation” is hardcore and probably the best song on the LP, but the opening lines (“I have been born in the age of thoughtlessness/And I too commit the crime of living in this world”) give me pause. Is it a crime to live in this world? And show me an age that hasn’t been thoughtless, I dare you, unless he’s talking big picture Kali Yuga, in which case I suppose he has a point.
“Empathy” is more melodic if generic—a word that can be applied to every single song on the album—and brings to mind Fugazi. Still, instead of personifying empathy, Cappo again chooses to hector and lecture. However, the opening lines (“In my world where I’m the king/I can’t tolerate anything/And cause of this I’m suffering all along, along along”) are as concise a description of the human condition as any.
“Not the Flesh” is proof that rap metal IS a terrifying symptom of modern man’s spiritual malaise, but that’s lost on Shelter—as for the lyrics, Cappo goes from downright belligerent (“Don’t rate me hate me deprecate me/Or be ready for the ramifications”) to, at long last, a positive message, didactic though it may be:
“We’ve got to instigate
And educate a spiritual solution
And we won’t sit we won’t conceal
Because many feel the way I feel any
Many want this earth to heal
I’ve got a voice of an entire generation.”
“Surrender to Your T.V.” is what you’d get if you leached every last ounce of humor out of Black Flag’s “T.V. Party.” It makes me want to fight for my right to watch Seinfeld, and frankly, I’d be lost nowadays if it weren’t for Progressive Insurance’s “It’s the Dog Park.” I love that goddamn song. But Cappo gives us lines like “Promises of paradise/To you I sacrifice my life/I’ll take you with me/To my after-life, if I could.” Me, I’m not sure I’d sacrifice my life to my television, but I’m certainly hoping the afterlife has even better shows than we have in the Age of Kali Yuga. Maybe it even has a more satisfactory ending than The Sopranos!
“Letter to a Friend” is just what you’d expect—a plea to an old pal who took a wrong turn in life and decided to, poor soul, maybe go out and drink a Lite Beer or something cosmically disastrous like that. Is it mawkish? Yes. Closer “Metamorphosis” is more second-rate music with a message. There’s nothing wrong with a sentiment like “I’ve got a vision to change my destiny.” And maybe there’s nothing wrong with the entire sentiment, except that Cappo spends more time talking about the problem than the solution, and the solution lies in the joy I hear in the devotional music of the Bhakti faith, but don’t hear in any of these songs.
“Shelter was a special time historically for us to do some service; to create art in the form of music,” Raghunath once said. “It was a time for us to speak Srila Prabhupada’s message in a way that allowed people to hear it more easily, and to reintroduce them to what real love is.” Maybe in part—Shelter does spread Prabhupada’s message, but then again, the holy man could be as joyless a scold as your next moralist. The problem is, I don’t hear any real love. All I hear is doctrine, which is the last thing I listen for in music.
I don’t care if Cappo’s spiritual betters encouraged him to use hardcore to spread the good news—when it comes to Shelter’s music, the medium isn’t the message. If you want to really hear the message, go to a temple or a place where the devotees of Krishna congregate and hear it and feel it the way it was meant to be heard and felt—as a pure expression of love through ecstatic song and dance that’s contagious. More joy, fewer preachers—that’s what the world needs.
Hare Krishna, motherfuckers!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D+
