CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
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 |  Subject: Listen up, FigaroFatz: Metal Music Can Be Good For You  Sat Jul 27, 2013 7:49 pm | |
| Wander the grounds of the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival, currently zig-zagging the country, and you see metal fans in the parking lot bare-chested, sunburned and passed out drunk in the middle of the afternoon. Once inside, there are hordes of kids sporting black t-shirts adorned with macabre and occult imagery. And on three different stages, a variety of musicians in bands such as Five Finger Death Punch, Mastodon, Machine Head and Amon Amarth, play buzzing, snarling guitars and machine-gun beats while their singers scream and roar with the intensity of bound, beaten captives shouting for rescue.
To those on the outside, the metal world is an ugly scene inhabited by misanthropes, misfits and non-conformists that bucks authority at every turn. Yet for all of its hostility and blatant nonconformity, metal is a panacea for its followers, the only way to make sense of a chaotic, callous society in which they don’t fit.
“I get kids come up to me all the time who tell me they were having a hard time in their lives and were on the verge of doing something drastic,” says Five Finger Death Punch singer Ivan Moody. “Then they’ll say they heard one of our songs and it totally spoke to them and convinced them to keep on fighting. To me, that’s more meaningful than gold records or music awards because it means that these people that are hurting relate to my pain and realize they’re not alone.”
Dismiss stray incidents in which deranged people who happened to like metal did something terrible, and you’ll find that as rebellious as some of its practitioners may be, and as negative as some of their music may seem, metal is ultimately a positive force for those who embrace it. Unlike pop, which endorses a herd mentality, metal speaks to those who question authority and strive to find their own path. It’s music for people who don’t want to conform and seek kindred spirits who crave the same visceral experience.
Look inside any city’s metal scene and you’ll find a community of individuals that bond through their favorite music. While they often express their collective identity with monstrous tattoos, tribal piercings and band t-shirts, penetrate the defensive armor and you’ll find a group of affable, often knowledgeable music fans who listen to metal for catharsis, energy and empowerment.
Turn back to the Mayhem crowd for a moment – or any gathering of fans at a major metal concert. There’s a marked difference between these individuals and fans at most music shows. It’s not just their attitude that’s different, the demographic is inconsistent with any other music genre. Catch a Justin Bieber gig and you’ll see a pack of kids and a few irritated parents. At metal shows, youths barely out of junior high stand besideheshers wearing jackets decorated with Motorhead, Ozzy and Iron Maiden patches. Professionals with receding hairlines, who entered a mainstream career but never gave up on their teenage love of metal, exchange head nods with 20-something girls in short skirts and tight shirts. To express their excitement, some play air guitar and nearly everyone raises the “devil horns” (the heavy metal salute, in which the pinky and forefinger are outstretched and raised skyward and the remaining fingers are clenched like a fist).
As with the musicians who roar therapeutically from the stage, the crowd’s seeming hostility is mostly skin-deep. At a casual glance it looks like the fans who dare enter the circular, spinning mosh pit are really trying to hurt one another. There’s arm-swinging, karate kicks and tons of pushing and shoving, as sweaty bodies bounce off one another like colliding billiard balls. But there’s a code of conduct to the pit. If someone falls, another mosher props him back up. When a fan on the periphery of the pit accidentally hit, the offending mosher will usually apologize. And if a hostile or violent person causes trouble in the pit, he’s often forced to leave by the other fans. The goal is to vent and have a good time, not to hurt or maim.
Those who don’t understand metal culture argue that the music encourages violence and drug use and endorses Satanism. Taken from the lyrics of bands like Slayer, Marilyn Manson and Behemoth, that’s basically true. But metal, like horror films, is a form of entertainment based on extremism. It’s meant to irritate and agitate and the only way it has survived for over 40 years is by retaining its will to provoke. When Cannibal Corpse sing about murdering victims and chopping up their bodies, none of their adoring fans take them at face value.
Metal has come a long way since 1970, when a quartet from Birmingham, Black Sabbath, opened the floodgates with an album of doom-laden songs that were louder and more confrontational than anything by Led Zeppelin, Cream or Jimi Hendrix. Since then, the genre has witnessed the twin guitar firepower and operatic vocals of the New Wave of British heavy metal, the syrupy choruses of pop metal, the rapid-fire beats and the chainsaw rhythms of thrash, death and black metal. Then, when it looked like alternative would consume metal, headbangers rallied with the down-tuned riffs and hip-hop beats of nu-metal, the computerized samples and electronic drumming of industrial, the hardcore influences of metalcore, and numerous other subgenres that make following the music’s chronology complicated at best.
It may even seem like a divisive evolution; black metal fans often despise any other type of metal and pop metal fans are more likely to listen to Maroon Five than Pantera. But it’s that very diversity that has allowed metal to thrive and keep fans that have been scarred by trauma feeling alive and surrounded by family. Unlike nearly every other form of rock, from punk to new wave, heavy metal has never faded into obscurity.
Jon Wiederhorn is the primary author of the book “Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal” and the co-writer of “Ministry: The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/07/26/why-aggressive-metal-can-be-healthy-music-therapy/?mod=trending_now_1 |
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