Van, Zarm and the hectic polarising of the metal scene

Van was a weird oke, hey. He was a bully at school and he was a bully now.
But the style of bullying had changed, mainly because Van was no longer any bigger than his mates.
At school he’d developed quicker than the rest of his chinas. He played second team rugby when they were still jolling under-15s. He wasn’t bad either – played flank. Open side.
But now he was no bigger or tougher than anybody else, so he had to find a new way of imposing his will on society.
Then some time in about 2003 or so, he happened to go to a gig by Cyst, his mate Zarm’s band. Metal band – sort of in the Metallica style, with a bit of Mudvayne and a bit of Killswitch Engage in there.
Van went to a private party in a garage that some babe was throwing for her boyfriend. And he checked them there. Somehow, Van decided that Cyst were awesome and that with a decent management and a wider audience they could become huge.
At the time Zarm was managing Cyst as well as being frontman, writing the songs and designing flyers, so he allowed Van to take over as manager. He seemed lank into it, so ja. Why not?
It’s amazing how far bullying can get you. You and your band.
Within weeks Cyst had a gig supporting Pestroy and Bloodbath at Tempo’s. The next week they played the Blues Room. Then they made the Star’s Tonight supplement. A full-on feature on page three with a picture of the band!
And all because Van was such an unpleasant, persistent, badgering kind of oke who could hak and hak and hak people until they agreed to do whatever he said, just to get him off their back.
“Listen here,” he’d told Liesl, the reporter for The Star Tonight, “I’ve given you the band photos, you’ve done the interview… Now when’s the story coming out? Come on Liesl, don’t waste my time here. People need to know about Cyst.”
So Cyst started getting better gigs, more media exposure… they even made it onto a German new-music website.
And the weird thing was, the band started influencing him too. He started getting tattoos – a full-on shoulder patch on his left arm. This piece depicting an angel in flames on his back and these hardcore barbed-wire wristbands.
He even pierced the back of his neck and got some scarification done on his right bicep. Dude started looking pretty damn hardcore.
Then the Metallica tour came to town. Soon as he heard about it, Van got on the phone and hustled Cyst a support slot. The played first, just before Bloodbath, but still, jeez. They were supporting Metallica!
Then something odd started happening. Entertainment Live did an interview with Van about the Metallica gig, and how it was such a cool development for South African music. And Van forgot to mention Cyst’s name even once!
Cosmo did a feature on band managers and did a whole photo shoot, well a full-page bleed in colour of Van with his shirt off, showing off his tatts. And all the caption said was “Van, 27. Band Manager”
Van was becoming a bigger star than the band!
Then one evening after band practice, when they’d finished showing Van the songs they had ready for the album, he dropped a bombshell.
Van was leaving the band.
He’d had a listen to Bloodbath’s latest stuff and he felt that they had a lot more potential for the overseas metal market than Cyst had “at this stage”.
He was taking Bloodbath on a tour to play some festivals in Germany in May.
Zarm and Van got into a shoving match and Van ended up with a black eye from kopping the Mole’s bass amp when he tripped over the drum stool.
“What you gonna do,” he asked rhetorically, and a little flushed as he scrambled out of the jam room. “What? You can’t force me to manage you!”
He was right, of course. Tellingly, the first gig Zarm booked after Van left was at some dude’s surprise party for his babe after he proposed to her. It was in a garage.
Van and Zarm never spoke again, and there was this hectic schism in the metal scene after that. If you put on a metal gig, you either have Bloodbath or Cyst come play. Never both.
It was hectic.