There's 'Metal' and there's 'Metal' and the 'Metal' scene is fucked: Part 1

Part One: The Fans

I like to think of myself as an open minded person most of the time and I love music. All types of music. Music is great.
I listen to most genres of music and my tastes are varied although I have never really got the dance music and rave scene (but if you want to take speed and go to what is basically a disco then be my guest).

One of the genres I probably owe the most to is metal. Heavy metal, thrash metal, death metal, black metal, you name it. I listen to many bands in each category and pretty much worship a few. It is the music I spend most of my time around these days and I am lucky enough to make a living from it now by combining playing in bands with producing bands from this genre in my recording studio.

On the whole it looks like the metal scene is as popular as it has ever been, maybe it is even bigger now than it was in its glory days of the eighties and nineties. After all, we used to have Donnington Monsters Of Rock each year which was amazing. One day, one stage, eight or so bands and it was cool.
Now we have Download, Sonisphere, Hammerfest, Bloodstock, Hard Rock Hell, Hevy and loads more grass roots, home grown smaller events.

All of the festivals mentioned above are run over a weekend providing multiple stages and probably around one hundred bands at each. The crowds for some of these are huge. Much bigger than Donnington ever was.

Surely this means that metal now is huge, it's massive, there are millions of metal fans out there right? Well you know what? I am not so sure.

You see, there is 'metal' and there is 'metal'. And they are completely different and more importantly the fans of the two are like different fucking species.

I am not just looking back on my teenage years with rose tinted spectacles and dreaming of the days before Metallica turned shit, Sepultura didn't cite fucking Korn as an influence (Roots Bloody Roots can fuck off) and we could all rely on Tommy Vance and Krusher to raise our spirits when the rain started and we were waiting for a band that was running late. Metal was different then in a much more important way than we could have imagined.

The problem is that on the whole (and some people will spit their snakebite and black out all over their screen as they read this) metal is for chavs.
There, I said it. And its true. You know it and don't want to admit it but you know I am right. Its for chavs.

These are not your ordinary chavs but none the less they are exactly the same. They have gotten rid of the burberry (but probably still have it at home somewhere just in case it becomes popular again) and have asked their Mum to keep hold of their gold chain and sovereign ring for safe keeping.

Metal has become so fashionable and popular that the kids at Download this year who were going crazy for "Children Of Boredom" or "Mullet For Duncan Bannatyne" were listening to "Dizzee Rascal" and "The Streets" a few months ago and in essence what is wrong with that. A change of heart, a new taste in music isn't a bad thing is it?

Maybe in this case it is. Because the thing that sets them apart from the other metal or alternative fans is that deep down they are still chavs and they carry that attitude with them.

The same guys that were down Liquid necking Bacardi Breezers and trying to finger drunk girls are now at metal festivals. But something deep down hasn't changed in them because they are at Download but they are still drinking WKD Blue, starting fights and trying it on with any girl within a hundred yard radius and when she says no she is a cunt, lezza and slag.

You can change the jeans for the skinniest ones you can find and get some shitty neck tattoos delicately framed by the Toni and Guy hair cut you are sporting but your attitude and intolerance is like a shining beacon casting a soft Burberry patterned glow that shines off your lip ring and through your flesh tunnels.

Nowhere is this difference more apparent than in the pit. I used to go crazy in the mosh pit but would probably keel over after ten minutes these days and I used to come home battered, bruised and aching but it was all good clean fun. We all used to push and shove and get a few bruised ribs every now and again but one thing we all had in common is we were there for a good time. A mosh pit was just that, not an excuse to fight. Some shows were tougher than others and you felt a little intimidated on a rare occasion but you mostly felt pretty safe.

Remember that big meat head guy in the Slayer shirt who just kept pushing you and pushing you? We were all in that situation once or twice. Well what happened when he actually pushed you a bit too hard and there was a gap behind you in the crowd and you hit the deck with a bump? That's right, he looked horrified, bent down, picked you up, said sorry, dusted you off, smiled.............. and then pushed you again.

In the last few years since the chavs have taken over the metal scene I have seen numerous mosh pits that I wouldn't go in (and I am not a small guy) because of the gang of Oli Sykes clones that are taking it in turns to land a few snidey punches on an unsuspecting fan and then standing back and laughing. These tough guys not only punch and kick people when their back is turned but also see young girls as fair game for a smack in the back of the head. And what happens when someone gets knocked down? They get left, trampled and kicked.

Ok, this is a generalisation and not everyone who listens to Bring Me The Horizon is a complete wanker and would kick a seventeen year old girls teeth in. But some of them would.

It's no surprise that the metal (and goth) scene has often attracted people who were outsiders and had more problems than the middle east. It was because those people felt safest within a crowd of metallers and because they knew that they wouldn't be judged for whatever issues they had going on.
The kids who got bullied at school by the really popular kids often became metal heads or goths. I have met a lot of people with physical and mental disabilities who really felt safe to be themselves for the first time in their lives when they started going to metal shows and became a part of that scene.

In America the same thing happened but much earlier than it did here. The Yanks don't really have chavs as such but in the mid nineties the "jocks" and "meat heads" found their own fight club at shows for bands like Coal Chamber and Drowning Pool. The same guys that were out in Iraq singing "Let the bodies hit the floor" while shooting the face of a civilian would go back home and kick the shit out of the skinny long haired kid in the Megadeth tee while downing a few brewskis with their buds. This still exists but now they have their own meat head buddies on stage in the form of Five Finger Death Punch.

So the chavs have taken over Donnington, Monsters Of Rock is long gone and Dio can't save us now. Mainstream metal has become the home of the very people who don't understand what the metal community is all about.

Metal WAS a community, we used to all look out for each other, we took care of our own, if someone fell in the pit they got picked up and the lyrics to Denim and Leather really meant something.
It was an attitude and a way of life. It was a philosophy and an outlet for frustration and for some, most importantly it was a refuge from the shitty things they had to deal with every day.
We are now as much of a minority as we ever where. Regardless of the fact that one hundred thousand people attend Download, whats left of the real metal community now congregates every year in Derby at Bloodstock where we are safe from being judged by people for not having the "right" tattoos or skinny enough jeans and we don't worry about getting bottles of piss hurled at our heads.
We wont be laughed at in the crowd by a group of floppy fringed guys with swallow tattoos on their necks or hearts on their arms because we are fat, disabled, nerdy or just plain don't look like we fit in and don't straighten our hair.

The metal scene is fucked........... long live metal!!!