See that kid over there? Yeah, the short, scrawny, pale, pimply one all by himself, covered in milk and pineapple chunks hurled at him by a particularly nasty, thoughtless senior. A few students notice and begin laughing, sounding forced, laughing for the sake of his little misfortune. He rushes to the restroom in hopes of wiping himself clean, but it's to no use, his shirt is soaked and he has no spare. He leaves the restroom, back into the lunch court where a few people are still snickering. He keeps his head down and tries not to notice them and makes his way to one of the buildings to sit by himself. Either that or go to drama club, a place where he sometimes frequents, and a place where other misfits hang out and be themselves, but he knows that he doesn't fit in there either. The happy, laughing LBGT youth of that club think he's a loser just as much as the jocks and partiers do. Just another day of harassment and disrespect for him. Also, his gory Cannibal Corpse t-shirt he often wears isn't making people think any higher of him.
This kid is obviously in the same group that I'd put myself in: the Heshers. Metalheads. Headbangers. There are millions of people in this world who love this aggressive, oft maligned genre of music, many of them as much as I do, but how can so many people be as fervent as a wolverine on crack about music that is obsessed with darkness and features ten-a-penny references to Satan? Most people would be, and are, put off by such pessimism and vulgarity, but my question is: why are there so many people who are NOT put-off by this? Why metal?
Ask most people and they will likely say that metal is "outsider's" music and in that lies the attraction for so many youth who make up the metalhead fanbase. I thought this for a very long time until recently when I realized-and many people may disagree with this-that metal really isn't that much of an outsider thing at all. When you can easily purchase the latest metal album at Best Buy or on iTunes, when you can go buy metal t-shirts at the mall, and when 20,000 or people or more flock to a Metallica concert, you can't really call metal a true outsider interest. For something to be a true outsider interest it has to, in my opinion, be way more severe than that. It should be mostly if not completely stigmatized by society at large as well as include only a miniscule portion of the individuals in that society. When 100,000 people attend the three-day Wacken metal festival PER DAY and when the music fits the criteria I mentioned earlier, it becomes obvious that metal is actually part of the pop culture landscape, not totally against it, like it or not. For a true outsider, look at someone like John Wayne Gacey who raped and murdered around thirty five young boys some time ago, not that kid with the Avenged Sevenfold shirt at your local mall, eating frozen yogurt, and talking with his friends about playing Call of Duty or whatever the fuck.
In short, don't look at metal as an "outsider" thing, instead, look at it as an unpopular thing, non-mainstream, or an alternative to the lighter side of the pop culture spectrum. So with that out of the way, we're still left with the question "why metal?" The conclusion I have come to is that people who don't fit in and need to deal with the negative emotions associated with being different are attracted to dark, aggressive music, especially music of that kind with lyrics about being yourself and overcoming hardship (some bands I can think of are Hatebreed, and more recently, Black Veil Brides.) That's the simple and accurate explanation for heavy metal's general appeal, but for me, it's a little bit different...
So why do I love metal so much? Why do I forsake mainstream culture and opt out to listen to, and practically worship this music, spend every spare dollar on adding more of it to my music collection and openly advertise my love for it with my dress and appearance? Because I find my "identity" in it is one obvious reason, however, one thing I have to make clear is that my love for metal has zero percent to do with identifying with lyrical content. This may seem unusual for many of you music heads out there, but I almost never read lyrics to anything, even concept albums, so my attraction to the music comes entirely from the music itself. Chuck Klosterman in his book Fargo Rock City asserted that metal is all about power, and I agree with this completely. A band like Judas Priest (my favorite band of all time) is obsessed with power, whether it be in their lyrics or the force of their music; the riffs, the beats, whatever, and those who feel powerless would have a lot to appreciate in heavy metal. The power I feel from listening to a good metal album is apparent from the get-go, just listen to "the Hellion" by the aforementioned Priest and see if you can't feel the same level of power that I do. It's palpable, almost undeniable.
In the end, metal for me is my escape, which many metalheads can attest to. It is always there. A great metal album will never tell you that you suck, tell you that you're a loser, or tell you that you'll amount to nothing before packing up and going home, and for that, metal has earned my lifelong loyalty \m/
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