Metal up your ass!

So I read an interesting article this morning. Read it for yourself below;

Clicky, clicky.

Now, my first reaction to this was, "Hell Yeah!" I've been an avid metal listener since I was 15 and I still enjoy and love the music as much as I did back then. Being that I've always had good grades in school (not always fantastic, but good and great... great and good.) and the social perception that kids who listen to metal are mental peons and "bad seeds" has always bugged me. Anyone who knows me knows that neither of those labels fit to well. It's not that I'm trying to be egotistical, I'm simply stating what others have observed about me. While this article validates a truth that I've long known (you can be a genius and listen to metal) the article itself really only purports that this is a possibility and not a general fact. While still cool, I think the real quality in the article is in it's unintended explanation of why people listen to metal (in general); that it is music of the social outcast.

I do not consider myself that much of a socially awkward person, though at one time I was. When I first got into the music, I was a large glasses wearing, showering three times a week, bonafide home school nerd. I still am that same nerd, I just don't look or act it anymore. I was the socially self conscious, awkward kid. I was not (nor am I still) that violent or angry of a person. Yet something about the themes of alienation, the loud aggressive playing, it all rang true to me. It was also the first thing that I got into that other people would consider "cool" without it being "nerd cool." Anime, that's nerd cool. Science fiction, that's nerd cool. Reading and writing, nerd cool. Listening to metal and playing bass, that's just cool. I still wouldn't consider myself a "cool" person but the thing that listening to metal did most for me, it heightened my sense of individuality. While I now had something in common with certain people in my school, I began to have nothing in common with people at my church. While they were all about Third Day and whatever flavor of the week "worship" band was around at that time, I was proselytizing the gospel of Zao, Sevendust, Metallica, Refused, Machine Head, King's X, Soulfly, Tool... you get the idea. Yet it felt like, even though almost no one in my group of people who "believed the same as I did" listened to it, it gave me an individual identity. It helped me to start to think about why I liked this stuff and other people didn't. I may not be explaining it well, but the point is simple; metal and heavy music in general helped me to think for myself, but to also express my individual thoughts and to be fine with not fitting in. And then there is the sense of family and community that is felt at metal shows. Where else can you have an hour long conversation with someone you'd probably never be friends with outside of that setting yet because you both listen to metal you automatically have something in common and are "BFFs" for that moment. A shared belief if you will. You know what's sad? I've almost never felt the same about my faith in Christ and my interactions with most of his "followers." What does that say about the state of American "Christianity." Hmmm... a little cynicism from my earlier days. Perhaps.

What is my point in writing all this? To try and defend metal and the music I listen to? No. If you don't get metal, there's a good chance you may never get it. Even if you understand the reasons one listens to it, there is still the harshness of the music itself. Some people can't get past that. Others love it. I suppose my point in writing this blog was to critique an adequately done newspaper article that became a "testimony" of sorts. I don't know where I'm going with this half assed blog so... go listen to some Opeth and raise your IQ a little.