"Snacking For Vengeance" Offers Appetizer

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I want to tell you a tale of two burgers.

Back when I lived in Chicago, there were two burger joints roughly two miles away from each other — one you may have heard of, the other you probably haven’t. The former is Kuma’s Corner, a metal-themed bar/grill famous for long wait times, absurdly huge burgers, and blaring heavy metal. The latter was Indie Burger, an obnoxiously twee restaurant that served overpriced, under-seasoned burgers within the vague trappings of “indie” culture, i.e. the meat was locally sourced, grass-fed, served on wooden trays, and the benches were repurposed from an old church, etc. Basically, it was a joke straight out of Portlandia, and it was treated as such, going out of business within a few months. Kuma’s, on the other hand, has expanded into multiple locations throughout the greater Chicago area.

While there were other mitigating factors at play here — namely that Indie Burger’s meat was objectively mediocre and served on brittle, flavorless buns, while Kuma’s is fucking delicious — the divergent paths these two businesses took offers insight into the intersection of food culture and music fandom. A burger joint trading in on the culture of indie rock doesn’t sit right with people. There’s no blatant connection. A metal-themed hamburger, while obviously a bit ridiculous, makes a certain kind of sense.

Maybe it’s the inherent brutality of preparing and eating meat, or maybe it’s all the fire and knives, but metal and food culture seem to overlap a surprising amount. To wit: a new online cooking show from Chris Pacifico and Frank Huang called Snacking For Vengeance. The premise is fairly simple: the two sit down with various metal bands, including Pyrrhon, Inter Arma, Gatecreeper, and more, cook them up a meal based on their band, and then interview them as they chow down.

The real hook — for those like me whose knowledge of cooking barely extends beyond omelets and throwing too much garlic on everything — is the interview segment. This is where the hosts talk to bands about how they eat on tour. Tour life is rough, especially for underground metal acts, so stories of the garbage your favorite metal bands put into their bodies are likely to be gross-out funny… but also illustrative of the grim realities of being a working musician. For those with more interest in the cooking side of the show, the food (at least from the trailer) looks pretty damn good, and a promised cast of guest cooks should help keep things fresh from episode to episode.

Watch the trailer below, and follow Snacking For Vengeance on Facebook.

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