It’s weird, so much metal, the lyrics are about destruction, violence, murder, and worse, but the crowds really are usually people not openly violent or worshipping the stuff.
It’s mostly people vibing on the intensity of the lyrics and raw emotion.
I can listen to a song from a band called Cattle Decapitation on dissecting a human, but none of it makes me want to do that. I think that’s something that a lot of people have trouble wrapping their heads around when they don’t listen to metal. They think that we are fundamentally violent brutish people, but honestly its usually the opposite- its usually intelligent artistic people with a natural intensity I find listening to metal.
Part of the appeal too is that the gross stuff is appealing not just because of the fascination with the morbid, but also imagining how much the music upsets and/or annoys the imagined older, more conservative establishment. Very much counter-cultural.
Heavy metal, punk, etc don’t center the older, more conservative establishment. One can delight in the squares clutching their pearls over something you enjoy that they find horrifying without making it about them. The thrills of the music, friends, moshing, etc far far far outweigh the vicarious shock value. Maybe the shock value was fresh and crispy long ago before we heard The Ramones or similar re-used in commercial jingles, but it isn’t there anymore: it’s all about the music.
I definitely agree with this, but often the shock value is part of the charm. For instance, Venom’s Welcome to Hell is both an excellent album (even with the low production effort by the sound engineers) and an early raspberry at the burgeoning satanic panic. It was released during the Led Zeppelin subliminal messages nontroversy, and include actual satanic messages recorded backwards.*
[*] It is recommended to play the album in the normal direction, as there are more satanic messages recorded forwards.
I prefer this version by Behemoth, and this version by Carpathian Forest of In League With Satan (also originally by Venom) I play this when I roll past my local churches slowly
Kinda like keeping the skulls of your enemies in one way, I guess. But it can turn into the One Ring sort of thing, where the trophy is cursed and begins to corrupt if you don’t watch out.
It was always a risk, I guess. Early punks also used Nazi memorabilia not for any beliefs, but to piss off the old geezers who kept going on about kids these days, and how they fought in the War so that those ungrateful louts could live on the dole. “Well, screw you, Grandpa, I didn’t ask to be born!” And some got actually seduced, actually fell prey to the cult of hatred.
Metal is always at risk, I guess: cathartic expression may become a celebration of the horrors, and the horrors you thought you were exposing end up being misunderstood as glorifying.
Punk has always had a pretty good weeding out process for nazis, usually involving fists. And Spotify should definitely have a “no fascist bullshit” toggle, or just not give them a platform at all.
I agree a goth one would be great. I recently decided to see once and for all if Death In June were actually fashy and sadly discovered they are on a nazi-supporting record label. Which is a real bummer because the not at all political songs like “the calling mkII” and “the peaceful snow” are great.
I was at a Death In June show in the early 00s, and Yikes, was I creeped out at the crowd. And the band… There was no doubt in my mind that they were full-on full-fledged kill-all-the-jews Nazi. I rather felt I had been misled by the promotional material. The show was on a pier, next to an old sunken ship which had been raised from the sea-bed and towed in as a sort of museum, and it seemed that all the goths migrated over to the haunted boat rather than stay at the concert.
And I know they’re not exactly metal, but it seems like not a month goes by without at least one member of Rage Against The Machine having to explain to a confused ‘fan’ that, yes, they’ve always been anti-facist, and no, the machine they want to smash isn’t a toaster, it’s capitalism.
(eg)
