My Comment on Metal Elitism

I thought I would be doing more of these when I started this blog (little thought pieces about metal that is), but metal this year has been really prolific in terms of albums that have taken up my attention that I’ve wanted to write about, and I’m glad it’s been so prolific too. It’s a genre that, despite most people considering it over the hill in terms of its presence in the public eye, is still vibrant, growing, and, quite importantly, still evolving and expanding. And that’s a big part of what I want to talk about in this little piece here: metal evolving and the people opposed to certain kinds of it or all of it.

When metal “elitism” is brought up in the context of discussions of metal music, most often what I see it referring to is something I think is more accurately described as metal purism. Elitism, I think, kind of applies better to things that are more objectively measurable, and music taste is both incredibly complicated to “measure” and hardly objective. Referring to the mindset that the term (metal elitism) describes, the “elitism” part of it sort of gives the people who hold the mindset a bit of undeserved credence, because it’s not like they have a more objectively elite taste or opinion (which arguably doesn’t even exist). Often, they’re just a little more arbitrarily picky about one or a few aspects of the genre that could easily, from another perspective, be seen as silly, like not wanting to date someone with a certain hair color or below a certain height: silly, but preferences are preferences. Well, preferences are one thing; deal-breakers are another. The attitude from metal “elitists” that most often irritates people is the closed-minded stiff-arming of some or any violation of their incredibly prioritized and rigid preferences of their music and their expression of discontent for it being violated in their eyes from some self-supposed position of authority (which explains why it’s so often referred to as elitism).

I’ve made pretty evident in previous posts on here how open I am to bands’ experimentation with their sounds and with the subgenres they play in and around. I love bands like Havok and Cannibal Corpse who keep to what they know they do best and continue to deliver streams of exciting vintage music, and bands like Havok, Power Trip, Ghost, etc. who play primarily older styles of metal in the modern era are an important part of keeping metal from being a volatilely trend-hopping genre and maintaining its longevity through the sustenance of more of its styles throughout the years. But (in my opinion) metal also needs to continue to evolve to stay “alive” and I think it’s a unique genre in that so much of its community from the entire vast age range it encompasses holds its oldest works in such high regard. Even metal’s youngest listeners praise 70’s and 80’s classics and icons like Metallica, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, etc. and even less famous groups like Anthrax, Sepultura, and Kreator still find a lot of praise from young listeners. But metal is almost half-a-century old now as a genre and it didn’t stop with the new wave of British heavy metal, or thrash, or black metal, or death metal, or nu metal, or metalcore, and it’s certainly not stopping with djent, or blackgaze, or the numerous other fringe styles of metal gaining more and more traction. And that’s great. What a time to be alive for metal listeners with so much metal out there to choose from, with older bands like Iron Maiden still putting out exciting traditional material, younger groups like Havok paying excellent tribute to such tradition, and others like Code Orange and Igorrr changing and expanding the landscape of heavy music.

I bring up the evolution of metal because I feel the opposition to some or all of it from “elitists” to be the most aggravating aspect of their mindset (and the pretentious attitude of course). Oppositions to things like growls or industrial elements I find often coming from older metalheads, often purists just stuck in their ways, reluctant to get out of their comfort zone (and who knows, I’m not 50, maybe I’ll be that way toward something else when I’m there, maybe that’s just a part of getting older, I haven’t experienced it yet). They’ll say things about how bands in their day really rocked and new bands just sound excessive and unmelodic, or how real music has to be played live on classical instruments, not computers (electric guitar amplified through numerous effects like distortion counting as a classical instrument in their eyes). But purism isn’t just an “old dad” thing either. Younger black metal purists being probably the most notoriously annoying bunch often attest that their pet subgenre must be kept pure of clean vocals or non-satanic subject matter or musical traits not entirely metal, often making the cultural appropriation argument against such things (which usually involves fallacious assumption of some culture’s absolute ownership of certain traits and false authority over others’ use of said traits). Purists have every right to have their opinions and their preferences, of course; it’s when that opinion is touted as law that really grinds my gears and the gears of people who enjoy something these purists don’t enjoy. I’ve been pretty fortunate to have witnessed just about all of this kind of behavior exclusively online; I’ve had pretty much only positive interactions and enjoyable, civil conversations with people at shows or music gear stores about music and such.

The most ridiculous and easily dismissible of the declarations purists often make are the broad, baseless (or unsupported), and sometimes flat-out wrong. But unfortunately, they’re some of the most frustratingly common too. “Metallica was pure shit after Justice.”, “X band was only the real X band with Y singer in it.”, “Bands who eschew corpse paint, church burning, satanic themes, or whatever aren’t black metal.”, “Nu metal, metalcore, deathcore, hair metal, etc. isn’t metal.”. That last one is so infuriatingly common and egregiously wrong I think hearing or reading it from so many people makes my blood pressure rise just a little bit; there can be metal that you don’t like and just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean you get to shut it out at the gates of the metal kingdom like some authoritarian ruler and declare it “not metal”. I really dislike hair metal for the most part, but it’s still metal; it’s just an era and subgenre of metal I find embarrassing and not to my tastes.

I think we all know what “metal elitism” is and what’s annoying about it, but what impact does it even have? It’s pretty apparent that a lot of these assertions are made with at least some intent of elevating the asserter’s position of authority and reverence by way of making their taste seem more refined. They (usually) want to seem more distinguishing in their choices and more enlightened by seeming harder to please on the basis of liking only the highest end of some linear scale of “quality” in music. “Oh, you like X band, well they’re not nearly as fast and technical and brutal as Y band (who are probably way too fast and technical and brutal for you).” It’s really petty, and at this point in my immersion into metal and its culture, it’s not at all detrimental to my confidence in my own music-related opinions or even worth the stress of a fruitless or disassociated argument. But I imagine to newer, younger, more impressionable listeners, these attitudes can be more confusing, disheartening, and discouraging, and from nearer to the outside, they reflect poorly on the community surrounding the music or worse, set a precedent of pretentious arrogance about musical selectiveness as a prerequisite for “true” membership in the community.

I’ve seen a lot of people complain gratuitously that metalheads are the worst treating and most unaccepting music listeners, always ready to shoot down someone with slightly different taste and scoff while doing it. I don’t know who these people are talking to or how many of them they’re talking to, but my decade or so of experience in the metal community has been majorly positive, even online. I honestly can’t really picture what kind of experiences they’ve had, but I think it’s an exaggeration of this blemish in the metal community. If most of the metal community were like this, Ghost, Deafheaven, Bring Me the Horizon, and Babymetal would not have careers as big as they are right now.

Like any culture, it’s important for metal to have some ways of determining who’s in and who’s out of it, or less in it. Someone who heard “In the End” yesterday and thinks Linkin Park is pretty heavy is obviously less immersed than a Death fan (who is still more than welcome to like Linkin Park). The Death fan can gladly suggest a path to heavier, more immersive music and suggest Linkin Park’s status as just the tip of the metal iceberg, and maybe the Linkin Park fan knows another band outside the world of metal that the Death fan might enjoy too. Sharing suggestions and tastes in music is pretty important in getting people into the community and deeper into the subcommunities of the genre. The key is the attitude of the interaction, and metal is certainly not the only music community with a problem of upturned-nosed fans who think their taste is superior to most other peoples’. It’s much more fulfilling and helpful to recommend some music you like to someone who doesn’t know it, even if their reaction to it is resistant, than it is to berate people for not matching your opinion. Just remember every time someone referred to death metal as “screamo” and passed it off as “just talentless cookie monster noise” that “isn’t even music”.

My main thing that I don’t think I see too many people saying: just stop calling it “elitism”.

They’re not elitists; they’re just metal purists.

They’re not elite for liking a more technical or more “kvlt” band, and just addressing their opinions like those of pouty, ultra-conservative purists who don’t like change that doesn’t cater exactly to their own presupposed notions is the best way to shut their behavior down.

And like all the interactions I described earlier, politeness works better than reacting to their vitriol or egotism with more of it.

Damn, no wonder I haven’t written so many of these; I thought this was going to be short, but I apparently just can’t do short.