Metal Misconceptions

The style of metal that I listen to seems to be becoming more and more popular, particularly in the growing recognisability of bands such as Sonata Arctica, Nightwish and Dragonforce (which remains one of the only melodic metal bands outside continental Europe, unless you count Metallica who turned to the dark side, or Iron Maiden who just collectively went mad). However, despite its growing popularity as an alternative musical genre, there do remain a lot of prejudices against the genre as a whole. I'm prepared to solely blame Fred Durst for the entire situation as it is now, but the rest of this entry analyses it in a little more depth.

1. Metal is violent.

This was demonstrated in an iPod add-on advert that I saw recently, where the player was set to "Metal" and little skulls and crossbones were flying out of it. That's not metal - that, if anything, must be pirate radio.

I think that the violent image of metal today is due to the nu-metal revolution fuelled by MTV (My hatred of that channel is flimsily based on only one reason - everything they stand for). The commercialised, "angry" image isn't one that is shared by the genre as a whole.

Another genre that I believe has suffered from this anxiety to appeal to disturbed youth is rap, which comes across to me as far more violent than I'm sure it is in reality. As Dylan Moran said in that sketch show I saw the other week (it was possibly called "Monster"), it's all about "I've got cars and bitches/My car runs on bitch juice/I'm going to dig up your mum/And stick her up your dad" and so on. I'm not familiar at all with what you might call the "true rap" behind it all, but I've been assured that it's entirely unlike the commercial image. Very similar to metal, really.

It's been said that all metal sounds angry. I think that the sound of it is more energetic than angry for the most part, and that those two musical emotions are distinct - however, this might be a valid point in that it's all in the ear of the beholder, or something like that.

2. Metal is satanic.

There was a time, admittedly, when having a demonic image in metal was considered trendy - this was around the 80s, when Steve Harris wrote "The Number of the Beast" about a dream that he had had, resulting in Iron Maiden being branded as satanists and their records being burned by some of the more insane religious figures.

This was also at the time when it was popular to listen for backwards messages on to recordings. One of these messages on Iron Maiden's records was alleged to say "I want you to sell your soul to Satan" when played in reverse. However, on closer inspection it emerged that the message was in fact Harris saying something along the lines of "Thanks, I'll see you tomorrow - cheers!" in the commonly accepted forwards direction at the end of a live performance.

They responded to that situation by putting a real backwards message on their next record, "Piece of Mind", to bait the people that wanted them banned. When this message was reversed, listeners were treated to the band's drummer belching in to the microphone and telling them not to "meddle with things you don't understand".

Even though I'm nowhere near as religious as I was a few years ago, the promotion (not the theme) of satanism in songs makes me rather uneasy. Only very few groups do this, though - in fact, I'm certain that the amount of bands that mention God, Heaven, and so on is far greater than those that mention Satan (for example Gamma Ray, who regularly write cryptically Biblical songs, particularly those by Henjo Richter). So there.

There are people, however, that say that it doesn't matter what the lyrical subject of metal is, and that it all has a "Satanic beat". I'm going to have to stop this section here because I find it impossible to come up with an argument against such creative idiocy.

3. Metal all sounds the same.

In fact, metal (and indeed its superclass, rock) is one of the most ludicrously subdivided genres in music, with meaningless names like Melodeath, Doom Metal, Black Metal, Power Metal, Progressive Metal, and so on. The music column on Something Awful had a large but mostly insulting list of these a while ago, detailing that speed metal is the opposite of heavy metal, nu-punk is the opposite of punk and nu-metal is the opposite of music.

I found one explanation that attempted to explain the difference between some subgenres which used the scenario of rescuing a maiden from a dragon to illustrate the point, so I'll see what I can remember.

• Heavy Metal - You ride in on your gigantic Harley Davidson motorbike, sword the dragon and motor off with the maiden.

• Power Metal - Galloping in on your enchanted unicorn, you fire your ethereal crossbow at the dragon then cast a teleport spell to get the maiden and yourself to safety (+5, roll against Luck).

• Progressive Metal - You saunter in to the cave with your guitar and play a 25-minute solo, boring the dragon to death.

• Nu-Metal (ugh) - Dressed entirely in black with cheap spikes from Hot Topic covering most of your arms, legs and face, you hang around in the cave until the dragon becomes uneasy and slinks off.

That's probably enough of that.

4. Metal has no musical merit.

It's easy to consider metal as brainless because of its unfortunate reputation, but conversely it can be one of the most complex musical styles - certainly more so than most popular music, anyway.

Comparisons have been drawn between metal and classical music, which sounds a bit far-fetched at first, but the structure of having instrumental and solo sections is rather similar, and there are many bands such as Stratovarius (and particularly other Finnish bands) which have a definite classical feel to them. One album that is often cited as an example that brings the two genres together is Metallica's S&M album, featuring the entire San Francisco Orchestra along with the normal band members.

I'm not sure how much I actually agree with the claim that metal and classical are so closely related, but they can certainly work well together. Some people seem to be turned off metal because there's too much going on at once rather than that it's too simplistic.

5. Metal is about dungeons and dragons.

An interesting point, this - anyone would think that I'm making up these as I go along. Again, the accuracy of this accusation depends on individual bands rather than being representative of the genre as a whole. The accusation mainly relates to power metal, a strangely named genre as it's one of the happiest forms of metal.

Manowar is very battle-oriented, but I don't know much about them because they were always rather too Warhammer-like for me. The scream at the start of Sign of the Hammer is hilarious, though. Hammerfall is slightly better, writing more melodic songs about killing people. Dragonforce take that approach and exaggerate it a huge amount, with a general sound like (I'm going to use it again) an explosion in a Skittles factory. Kamelot, despite their silly name, have written only one song about King Arthur, one that mentions a dragon in passing, but two entire albums about Faust.

Power metal can be rather fantasy-based, although Piet Sielck of Iron Savior (along with being the producer of just about the entire musical output of Germany for the last twenty years) took a different approach and put the genre in to science fiction, which worked just as well. The story that runs through the collection of albums (featuring Atlantis and giant robots - it would make rather a good anime) was apparently going to be a novel, but he never had time to write it, so he turned it in to a series of albums instead. I suppose that makes it literally a space opera.

There are some lapses, though - for example, on "Worlds Apart", an otherwise completely un-D&D album, DC Cooper of Silent Force suddenly uses the present tense verb "runneth" as if he's some sort of Thy Dungeonman. This hardly makes them inaccessible, though. Come to think of it, they're overdue for a new album if you ask me.

6. Metal listeners are elitists.

Some people seem to automatically think of me as a musical elitist, but I try not to let this be the case. After all, anyone who enjoys listening to the J-pop that I have on my computer alongside all the more valid stuff can't claim to be a musical anything.

Another problem is that to many people who enjoy this style of music, it seems that when something becomes popular in the mainstream, it seems to be less valid by definition. I don't know why this is - possibly because of the typically almost completely inverse proportions between chart success and musical quality. Look at the recent number 1 star, for example.

But with that, I think that as long as you can give reasons for your preferences, other than simply that it's popular at the time, any form of musical taste is as valid as any other.