I've been listening to metal since I was 17. Most people don't count Linkin Park (Nu Metal) or similar bands as "metal" and frankly neither did I as a kid. And when I was young metal music scared me. Namely Slipknot and its fans.
But that's not the point of this. I've been listening to Metal for ten years now and I've been in a Death Metal band for the past five. And I've learned a lot and seen a lot that can happen in the "scene" and the community. And I want to shed some light on those things for people who might not understand the appeal of the type of music we get dressed up in black and bump into eachother for.
To give more context to who I was musically when I was 16, my favorite bands were Taproot, Deftones, and Trapt. Not soft music by any means (for the most part) but not as heavy as some of the stuff I listen to now. I was very much raised on WEBN, a local Cincinnati radio station that plays classic and modern radio rock. Now if you don't know what radio rock is I'll give you an example, Disturbed is radio rock. They are "heavy" in that they play some heavy riffs and their vocals sometimes have screaming. But for the most part they are clean vocals (singing).
When I was in highschool there was a huge boom in the Emo/Screamo genres. Bands like Hawthorne Heights, Silverstein, Senses Fail, My Chemical Romance, and the like were highly popular in the school and online (myspace). Those bands feature a lot of singing but more explicit screaming vocals. High or low pitched, more often than not high pitch, since a big negative remark is that those bands are "whiny".
Anyway, this change of music landscape and wanting to fit in with an ever grown crowd of kids I dabbled in some of that scene. And I liked a lot of it. Silverstein is still one of my favorite bands after ten years.
This is used to illustrate a bit of a shift. In 2006 I also started to listen to some "Metalcore" music like Bullet for My Valentine. Now this was a big shift. Up to this point I wasn't a big fan of screaming vocals. I felt it was grating and I didn't see the appeal.
"How can you understand what they are saying?" comes to mind as a usual retort.
And I also didn't appreciate the "metal" kids at school. They were weird, wore weird clothes and were just weird. A group of people I wouldn't want to be associated with. So much so that when I realized I liked a Slipknot song not realizing it was Slipknot I was upset with myself, afraid I was going to become a weirdo. (Yeah I know, I was a stupid kid. But aren't we all at 14?)
Skip ahead and it's 2007 and I'm watching Fuse, a network like what MTV used to be in the 80's, watching their Top 10 Metal countdown. The song that caught me was My Curse by Killswitch Engage. A band that is very heavy, compared to my old tastes and which features an equal melding of singing and screaming vocals. I remember initially being put off by the screaming but it grew on me quickly and I bought their album.
I call this my turning point because before then most of the music I bought was very radio friendly (Killswitch and bands like them are very very very rarely played on the radio). This one album opened the flood gates on ever increasing interest in metal. It started with them, turned into Metalcore from the late 2000's - early 2010's, and eventually grew to accept more heavier and ultimately darker music.
I was listening to music with no singing at all and I wasn't put off at all. In fact I found myself
Bands like Whitechapel helped me break into the genre even further so that when 2012 rolled around and my best friend Tony came back from California I approached him about starting a band. And a few months later Kingdoms Burn was born.
Now that I've laid out my personal history with metal, at least the relevant cliff notes, I can talk about WHY.
"WHY OH WHY DO YOU LISTEN TO THAT DEVIL MUSIC!?"
Let me start off by saying that most metal bands now and in the past used Satan worship as a way to piss off Christians. Most if not all metal musicians are normal, none Satan worshiping people. The imagery is used to incite fear in those we don't care for and to entice people we want to entertain. It's all a show.
Now, for the music itself, most people starting out don't understand how we can listen to that "noise" or say "do you even know what they are saying?"
Which is understandable. Do you know what this guy is saying? Senseless Massacre by Rings of Saturn
To tell you the truth I didn't know what he was saying for the most part but it sounds cool. And that's the big thing. Music of any sort, whether it be pop or show tunes or rap appeals to our senses in some form. It makes us feel happy or sad or inspired. The same goes for metal music.
Metal for a lot of people is used as a way to let out aggression in a healthy way.
"But mosh pits are just big fights!" says the uneducated.
Well you're wrong. If you watch a pit, there are sometimes crazy crowd killers also known as asshats but the pit is most often filled with people all wanting to let off some steam but don't want to hurt others. In any instance if you see someone fall, no matter whats going on, the crowd stops to help him/her up and brush them off so they can once again partake in the fun.
"Okay, but I still don't understand the words."
To this I would say, how many pop songs choruses have you messed up over the years? Sang the wrong things because you couldn't necessarily hear what they were saying? That all comes down to how far into learning their words you want. But even beyond that sometimes it doesn't really matter what they are saying.
For me and many others it's about the emotions that are incited in you as you listen. I feel elation from a massive breakdown, a surge of energy during a speed riff or solo, and wonderment during expansive melodic compositions. Metal has incited every emotion in me. Sadness when it's a song about lamentation, joy from a funny song or part in a song, anger or the catharsis of releasing pent up anger during a chuggy breakdown and calm when a song breaks into an expansive mindscape of sound.
Like I said before, Metal, like any music, incites emotion and though Metal, for the most part, appeals to the aggressive nature of men there are women who enjoy it and get the same emotions/catharsis that men.
Biologically men are more aggressive and the music is fueled by that aspect.
Why else would you have a song that sounds like this? Or this? Or even this?
Even still it can be and is enjoyed by anyone and everyone without any exclusion.
While I don't expect anyone to give metal a try after this tirade I hope that maybe some people can see metal musicians/fans as people just like you. People that want emotional outlets but instead of finding it in a Taylor Swift song or a Kendrik Lamar song, they find it in Ingested or The Black Dahlia Murder.
We are people too. <3 nbsp="" p="">
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