Do you like Electric Wizard? If so, your heart is about to be warmed. As one of the most popular doom metal bands, not only does their music touch discerning metal fans everywhere, it also extends to African American poets in their ’60s. A Reddit user posted the following yesterday, with the title “Hello, I’m a 65 year old African American spoken word poet. I would like to incorporate doom metal in my poetry. Do you think people would be receptive?”:

Hi y’all, my name is Clarence Marshall. I’m a writer, artist and poet. it’s not my day job but it is my passion. Recently with the nice weather I was driving with my windows down and came to a stop light. Right next to me a young woman was playing some music in her car and I couldn’t help but notice it, because it sounded very blues influenced. I asked her who the artist was, and she proclaimed “Electric Wizard”, I asked her what kind of music it was and she said it was “doom metal”? When I got home I proceeded to buy all of the albums right off of the itunes! To me this music sounds like blues music from the future! Anyway, i’m thinking of hiring a guitarist and having him play in this style as a backing track to some of my darker poems, particularly one poem I have in mind when I almost was beaten to death by the police in Georgia in the early 1970’s. I just wanted to know what fans of this type of music would think about a man like me incorporating it into my artwork?

That’s just awesome right there. Props to the woman playing EW in her car, and even more props to Marshall for being open to incorporating it. Many on the thread chime in, offering band suggestions, and it seems like there were enough people that weren’t familiar with doom that it encouraged others to listen to Electric Wizard for the first time. Marshall chimed in later in the thread:

Ok, so I would like to the thank everyone for their words of encouragement. I am very excited because I feel like I may have discovered something for myself that is hidden in plain sight. I believe I have seen many of the bands that influenced this music. As a young man I have seen live on stage: The Doors, Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath. At 19 years old I was at the original Woodstock and got to see Jimi Hendrix, that moment changed the course of my life. I would like to point out that I get the same type of feeling from listening to track #8 off of the album “dopethrone”. My wife thinks I have completely lost my mind! Oh well, life is strange and only gets stranger.

Elsewhere, he shares a poem that he wrote. The overwhelmingly positive feedback and attitude of those in the thread makes it seem like the internet isn’t just a dark and sketchy place full of bullies.