My Take on The Metal Community - From an Avid Metal Lover

Over the years, 6 and a half or so, I have attended hundreds of gigs and metal music orientated events, parties filled with fellow metal loving maniacs and over this time I have discovered something rather ridiculous and hypocritical, and that is how outrageously stupid a vast majority of the metal community can be.

The first thing that has me bewildered by the utter idiocy of metal loving people across the globe is their lack of musical variety, how they go on and on about being open minded to music and more superior to those who listen to "simply commercial mainstream music" because they listen to bands the general population of music listeners have never heard of but when a band tries something new the fans are quick to blast them, call them sell outs or anything of the sort.

The perfect example for this is with the new In Flames album. Sure, In Flames fans have been absolutely vacuous morons for years now but with the release of Siren Charms it's gone to a whole new level. While I don't actually like the album, I'm not going to tear the band apart for wanting to try something different, not wanting to become stale and repetitive in their sound and fade away and be forgotten. Yet their "fans", and I use that word very loosely, feel the need to call this band sells outs, especially since their signing with Sony Music, and because they aren't releasing Whoracle Pt. 2. Seriously, can these people be any more stupid and hypocritical?

Then there's Opeth. We all know the deal here. Mikael is a big fan of progressive rock music and very much progressive in his own musical creativity, and if you've ever heard at least one Opeth album, you should know that sooner or later they would go in the direction they have headed with Heritage and now Pale Communion. It was blatantly obvious on Watershed, and while I love and miss the days of My Arms, Your Hearse, I still admire their braveness to push the boundaries and create forward thinking progressive music. But clearly not everyone is on the same page and feels the need to react in the very way, to Pale Communion, majority of In Flames "fans" have reacted to Siren Charms. Also, if Mikael is over the whole death metal side of their previous releases, then why should he be forced to go back and create a new album that is effectively My Arms, Your Hearse Pt 2 or Still Life Pt 2? People need to realise that being in a band is not always about pleasing the fans as you need to be happy with what you're doing, or how else can you continue to do it?

Not every band is going to continue to use the same formula for every album they ever release in their entire career and there is a very good chance your favourite band will, at some point, want to experiment and try something new, and the thing with this is that it may not always come off well. But then again, musical taste is subjective so it's entirely up to the listener as to whether it has come off well or been an absolute failure. And if you don't like it, then fine, move on. Listen to a band who's released something you do like, or go back to your mum's basement, put on your Lunar Strain cassette tape and cry like the immature baby you are that In Flames aren't becoming mundane and stale by doing the same thing thousands of times throughout their career like they did on their first few releases.

Sure, Amon Amarth have done it for the past 20+ years since their debut album Once Sent From The Golden Hall, but they are happy with their sound and it's one almighty sound at that, and they are Amon Amarth!

Another thing that irritates me is when metalheads rave on and on about being open minded but will tear anyone apart when they discover that someone listens to a band they don't consider to be "metal" or "brutal" or in any way to their liking. Because clearly every single person that likes the incredibly wide ranging and ever changing musical genre that is metal must all share exactly the same taste and listen to the mind numbing distorted guitars of Slayer.

I remember attending a Fleshgod Apocalypse/Septicflesh co-headliner at The Hifi Bar in Melbourne and after the gig got talking with your typical "I am better than you" metalhead wanker about how much he hated Septicflesh's performance, but not once did he mention that he decided to leave early because he disliked their show so much. No, instead he decided it'd be better to stay around the whole 90 minutes and watch every second of it so he could go outside after the gig had finished and rant to everyone about how bad he thought it was. Because that makes sense, doesn't it? Then he was handing out flyers for the Coroner show which was being held at the same venue and when I told him I didn't want one because I didn't like the band, he had the audacity to tell me how stupid I was by liking Septicflesh and not Coroner. He's lucky my first did not go through his scrawny, ugly and annoying face. But I decided to be the better person and walk away.

I have a strong dislike for the thrash metal scene but you don't see me attending thrash gigs just to let everyone know how much I hate it; probably because they're all massive meat heads and I'm no fighter, nor am I suicidal, but that's beside the point. My point is that the sooner these degenerates grow up and get out of their little arrogant and egotistical shells and become the decent human beings they so love to go on about being the better.