Its a tough one, my fiancé will tell you I'm one of the biggest music snobs ever, and I do have very definite opinions, for example I believe that pop punk is just horrible and should just stop and Linkin Park are an abomination, but I don't consider myself to be a true music elitist, I'm just passionate about music and metal is definitely the focus of most of my passion, its part of how I identify myself as a person, so I say fuck this "lets all be happy and get along and give each other hearty back slaps and hugs" bollocks, some music is fucking horrendous and deserves to be called on. Music should incite strong emotions in us, it should make us happy, or sad, or angry, or mental, that's why its so important, if it doesn't then quite frankly what's the point?
OK lets get this out of the way real quick , these are examples of shit music in my world, you may disagree, but that's just because you don't know any better;
Justin Bieber - he's an annoying little toss piece
One Direction - Simpering pop nonsense
Everything to come out of any music reality TV show EVER
Blood on the dance floor - What the actual fuck, I don't even know where to start
Nickleback- because Chad is a humourless cunt who has managed to harness the essence of Vanilla and make millions
Linkin Park - Do. Not. Get. Me. Started
Puddle of Mud - See above ^
I could go on, but the point is I feel perfectly within my rights to call all of the above a load of old bollocks, see I have taken the time to actually listen to them and then formed an opinion accordingly. What I do not think is acceptable is the current trend in many metal fans, to look at a band and how they dress, not bother to really listen to them and then spew forth a load of moronic homophobic vitriol.
I'm going to look at the Black Veil Brides as great example of this, if you look for example at any facebook page such as Metal hammer, the moment this band are mentioned people seem to think that its perfectly acceptable to pour scorn, hate and call them oh such clever things such as "fags" and "homos" well what can I say? In the face of such wit I am all but speechless.
OK lets look at the band
Yes they have a certain image, and yes their target audience is very obvious, and they are hated almost exclusively because of this. If you had never heard them before, and just read the bigoted comments on-line you could be forgiven for imagining them to be the worst band for decades. Is that accurate? No its not, the simple fact is they aren't as bad as you would imagine, nothing ground breaking certainly, and probably not something I would ever go out of my way to listen but OK for what they do, it didn't make me angry or incredulous to listen to them there were even some riffs I thought were OK, for what they are, they are all right, and Andy Biersack does seem to be a clever chap who knows exactly what he's doing.
There is this minority within the heavy metal community, who make all fans of metal music look like inbred, bigoted morons, now there is no doubt this attitude is prevalent in fans of other genres, but the Metal Community is something unique in music and something I have always been proud to be part of, but sometimes, just sometimes that feeling is tested, especially when I see what some of the key board warriors have to say.
BUT
The image a band adopts does play a huge part in how we perceive and relate to them, there are countless bands out there, who dress a certain way, and in many cases I could almost certainly predict whether I would love, loath or be bored by them, 2 examples of this are Sleeping with Sirens and Pierce the veil I saw them and I did make a judgement I thought they would sound terrible, but I did give them both a go, I listened to a few tracks and even saw Pierce the Veil live, the result? They were both absolutely HORRENDOUS, I'm fairly certain I got ear cancer just by listening to them, just fucking awful especially PTV, the worst band I have ever seen live, my god they were terrible.
Well hold on, doesn't this add weight to the argument that we should just judge bands on how they look? Well lets have a look at a few more examples, bands who also get a lot of hate, Bring me the Horizon and Asking Alexandria
OK Hmm lets have a look at them, they look about as metal as Noel Edmonds right? (maybe less, he has a beard) They must be shit right? Well actually (although I think that both bands early efforts were woeful) both bands released albums this year which were on my end of year list BMTH in particular were in the top 5, Sempiternal was a simply stunning piece of work, and anyone who listens to it and doesn't at least find something to like or at least see why it was so successful, well I just find you suspicious as a human being. Both bands dress a certain way, and as such are decried as "Homos" or "Fags" but they both have undoubted talent even if AA are a bit dodgy live.
Image is important though, maybe it shouldn't be, but it is, how a band looks has a real effect on how they resonate with us, so in some respects I can understand why these bands garner such strong reactions. Bring Me The Horizon for example, as utterly brilliant as I think Sempiternal is, they are not a band I can truly identify with, so I will probably never love them like I do bands like Machine Head, Megadeth or KoRn, visually they come from a part of the metal world I don't really understand, though that could be because I'm a grumpy old man, but I will buy and enjoy their records and last year at Brixton was one of my gigs of the year.
Ultimately when you look at a band you will form an opinion, the trick is not to let such quick judgements take root, take the time to listen to them, or if you choose not to, then don't bother speaking about them, your speaking from a position of ignorance and your opinion is less than worthless. But by choosing not to listen to the things outside your musical comfort zone you could be missing out on something great.
So come on people,lets not hate bands based on how they look, lets hate them because they are shit.
So right now lets all hate Linkin Park together, if we do it long enough you never know, maybe they will go away.
