Yes. I like heavy metal. A lot. I have ever since a friend in primary school lent me a tape of Dio’s The Last In Line, which he himself had borrowed.
Metal fandom is too often something that adults are expected to explain or even sheepishly pseudo-apologize for, especially if the topic of musical tastes comes up in a professional setting.
It’s a shame, because I tend to find that metal fans have a sharper, keener understanding of music than average. They also, contrary to popular belief, largely hold values that good-and-decent folks are expected to have.
So, why me? And why metal? Here’s why:
The musicianship is unparalleled: Take in Iron Maiden’s harmonized dual-guitar ostinatos, Dave Lombardo’s masterful skin-pummeling, Marty Friedman’s dizzying virtuosity, Steve DiGiorgio’s expansion of the bass guitar, or the incredible vocal range of a Rob Halford or Geoff Tate. If you aren’t moved by any of those, get a thermometer because you probably are already dead and have achieved room temperature.
It’s the ideal “mashup genre”: Metal is probably the most mashup-friendly of genres, making it parallel with my open-source biases in general. As a parallel to the infamous Rule 34, “If it exists, there is a metal version of it.”
It is (relatively) apolitical: This is very important to me. In general, to the degree most bands could be said to have “political” lyrics, they tend to be focused on what I would consider pre-political themes, such as freedom, anti-corruption, racism, bioethics, and so on. In all of the concerts I’ve been to, I’ve only once seen a band that uttered a purely political message — an opening act that had no business warming up for Soulfly whose singer obnoxiously screamed “F**k George Bush” between every song and, I surmised, before his shift at Hot Topic the next morning. Political affiliation, generally, doesn’t seem to be very central to the identity of metal bands or their fans. I prefer it that way.
It is the global voice of freedom: Think back to the Cold War era, behind the Iron Curtain. Young Dimitri has multiple generations of family underneath the roof of his damp one-bedroom cinderblock home. His mom waits in line for hours to purchase the family’s share of gray cabbage. Dad, with his last good arm and most of the fingers on his remaining one, works less-than-soberly as the tertiary bolt-turner at the tank factory. Neighbor is probably a spy for the government, surreptitiously checking the family’s mailbox for samizdat. Prospects are bleak. So, what music (hard-earned and hustled-for on the black market) does Dimitri reach for to escape? Randy Travis? Whitney Houston? Cindy Lauper? NWA? The Knack? Rick Springfield? Nope. He’d have eaten his brother’s last dirty portyanki for a copy of Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast.
It is the musical voice of tolerance and inclusion: Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford came out as gay on MTV in 1998. Over the last several years, the band is as popular as ever, celebrating fifty years. It’s incredibly hard to imagine that Public Enemy or The Highwaymen would still have much of a fan base if, respectively, Chuck D or Waylon Jennings were to follow Halford’s example, even as good as those groups were. Rejected by the Christian music scene after coming out, Doug Pinnick always had a home in hard rock and metal. And while largely considered a genre by-and-for suburban white males, the perceived novelty of a female or a Black band member has (thankfully) started to fade over the last several years. (Further, at least to my knowledge, there is no mainstream genre equivalent in metal to this anthem.)
It speaks to generations: A buddy of mine and I saw Testament, Megadeth, and Slayer a while back here in Chicago. There were observably three generations in the audience — a remarkable sight, especially for what is largely regarded as an extreme music genre that gets near-zero radio play, mainstream promotion, or (I’m convinced) algorithmic lift. I would witness the same at other shows. (I can only imagine what age demographics a band like Kiss gets.) Today, as a parent, I get a thrill whenever I hear my twelve-year-old daughter belt out Rainbow’s “The Man on the Silver Mountain.”
Its artists generally maintain peak creativity relatively late in their careers: It would be easy for metal bands to ease into the financial comfort of the human jukebox. Certainly, many have as all successful musicians perhaps must to some degree. But, for a lot of musicians, this only serves to support other creative ambitions. George Lynch, the musician who made me want to pick up a guitar, is nearing 70 and has maintained a rich and diverse creative output, which includes collaborating with the aforementioned Pinnick, who is now 71. Alex Skolnick, another hero of mine, branched out into jazz and world music, and even managed to write an excellent autobiography, Geek to Guitar Hero. (I can proudly say I’ve mastered the former.)
Does anyone really expect me to apologize for any of the above? When you demean heavy metal as “noise,” you simply are not listening with both ears. (I mean… At least most of the time.) When you say that metal is something you’re expected to “grow out of,” you are implicitly rejecting the values described above — values that I imagine you are likely to profess (and, in these virtue-signaling times, do so conspicuously) in pretty much any other context.
Meet us halfway and be warmly — and loudly — welcomed.
Recommendations
BUSINESS: “A Brief Introduction to Container Logistics,” LessWrong (2021): A great insight into how the world of commerce keeps moving — just as much about relationships and personal favors as it is the mastery of a complex logistical process. “While there are usually detailed contracts regulating many corner cases, in practice the cooperation between these entities is often done informally, based on long-term relationships between organizations and even between individual people at those organizations.”
MUSIC: “Please Allow Me To Correct a Few Things,” Slate (2010): Mick Jagger didn’t actually write this letter refuting claims made in Keith Richards’s autobiography, but what if he did? A hilarious romp. “Oh, the stories. The rock, the girls. The car wrecks, the arrests. You read them on the printed page, delivered in what, I must admit, is a pretty fair written representation of Keith’s slightly tangential, drawling, effeminate delivery, resting charmingly just this side of the incomprehensible.” About that last point: Growing up in the Bay Area, one radio DJ was giving away Stones tickets if you could correctly decipher a Keith Richards interview clip.
TECH: “Crypto kids fight Facebook for the soul of the Metaverse,” CoinTelegraph Magazine (2021): Proud to say that I called this in 2017 when I wrote the first marketing industry whitepaper on blockchain technology for the American Association of Advertising Agencies. From CoinTelegraph Magazine: “‘Owning your avatar and all its data is a fundamental tenet,’ says [Mike Rubin of Dreamium Labs]. ‘If your interactive digital identity is not transportable to a destination, then, by definition, that destination can not be part of the Metaverse.’ So, a Metaverse carved up and controlled by companies is not a Metaverse.”
Parting Shot
I have so many questions…