Bugs and Metal Music - Miles Lomanno

 Miles Lomanno

11/23/2025


Bugs and metal music


I went home from college to visit my parents this weekend to see a concert with them at the Norva. It was a metal band called Gwar who had violent cinematics with costumes, blood, and killing. The audience is usually sprayed with blood, and with it being the last show of the tour, they went all out, using the rest of the blood they had on us. The morning of the concert, my mom and I decided to do an activity that merged this violent energy we had due to the built-up excitement with a more calm, peaceful energy. We walked to the pet store to buy some litter for my parents’ two cats. The peacefulness was inherent since we got to think about two sweet, friendly cats the whole walk, and the violent energy was released during us taking turns holding the 30-pound awkward-to-carry box of cat litter a half a mile back to the house. We could have just taken a car, but we wanted to save gas and we like to see what we can find on the way there and back. On the way back, once we had gotten into the neighborhood, I stopped (I was the one carrying the litter on the final stretch), and I saw a bug on the ground. The perfect mix of metal and adorability. It looked like a wasp, with a long body and a striped abdomen, but it didn’t appear to have any wings. That alone would be scary, and perhaps one could even consider it metal, but I was drawn to it because its face was covered in pollen, which gave it a cute factor. It made him look fuzzy and unaware. I did some research later and found out it was a giant stonefly nymph, which is rare to see out of the water, which added to the specialty of the encounter. I was enjoying simply looking at him so much that I forgot that I was carrying 30 pounds in my arms. And I believe the reason I was enjoying it so much was because I sensed that it was a rare encounter and that it wrapped up a day of blood and cats before it even started.

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