‘Behold Death, Darkness, Chaos and the Void’

NEW YORK — The visual language of heavy metal is punctuated by certain age-old signifiers: denim, leather, bullet belts, long hair, black T-shirts with skeletal logos. Depending on how your night has gone, blood.

Steve Proana, who lives in Sunnyside, Queens, understands the importance of finding the perfect band shirt. He became a collector eight years ago, after unearthing a 1987 Megadeth tour tee in a Manhattan thrift shop.

“Owning old-school metal shirts is like holding a piece of history,” Proana said. “It is a statement of what we are and what we always will be, and that is staying true to our old-school metal roots.”

New York City’s metal clubs are concentrated primarily in Brooklyn and Manhattan. But in Queens, with its large Spanish-speaking community, clubs like Blackthorn 51 in Elmhurst and Sabor Norteño in Corona form a nexus for the borough’s small but dedicated DIY metal scene.

Maca Buriticá was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and moved to Florida when she was 10. There, she learned how to play guitar at age 15 and was involved in several left-wing punk bands. After years spent singing about animal rights and women’s liberation down South, she moved to New York City in 2014, picked up a bass and joined the Queens black metal band Nite Rite as a bassist in 2017.

The band’s music is heavily atmospheric, melodic and monochromatic, with occult overtones (audience members can expect to “behold death, darkness, chaos and the void” at a typical show).

Latinx clubs and shows booked by Latinx metal promoters are more likely to draw a Latinx crowd, Buriticá said, but the music comes first.“Metal is definitely a universal language,” she said. “We personally sing in English with some songs in Spanish. However, our fluency in Spanish allows us to greatly connect to the Latinx metal scene.”

But music clubs throughout the five boroughs are dying at an alarming rate, and those that served the metal community have been hit especially hard.

Bigger acts have more freedom to pick the clubs they will play, but Proana, Buriticá and their friends have fewer options to find the kind of metal that they love, which is why DIY shows held in bars and basements have become the lifeblood of their scene.

“I think that any band that tries to keep the scene alive in their hometowns contributes into the American metal scene in some way, and I think that’s something very special,” Proana said.