Gatekeepers??? In My Metal Scene???

Dark Juan’s Saturday piece – Gatekeepers

If there is one thing I have never understood about the world of Metal, it’s the gatekeepers. The ones still wearing carefully looked after Metallica “Kill ‘Em All” t-shirts from 1982. The long haired, now paunchy old farts (rather like Dark Juan in that regard, sans the hair) who regard themselves as the sole arbiters of taste in the world of Metal. The ones who swear absolutely fucking blind that nothing good has been released since “Reign In Blood” in 1986, and the ones who will do anything to denigrate and bring down the artists who are trying to do something new with Metal, your Seething Akiras, your Lesbian Bed Deaths, even your Ghosts. 

The irony is that these gatekeepers, these fucking know-it-alls are killing their own scene with their endless negativity, and their staunchly held belief that Metal is only alive today because Judas Priest and Saxon and Iron Maiden are still releasing records and will troll the comment sections of any social media they can lay their sweaty, fat hands on to claim that Ghost aren’t Metal because Tobias covered an ABBA song, or that MASTER BOOT RECORD aren’t Metal because they only use keyboards, or that Seething Akira aren’t Metal because they use samples in their music, or any other frankly fucking spurious reason, simply because they don’t conform to the paradigm that these people think Metal should allow itself to stagnate into – all wailing vocals (or inchoate roaring) and guitar, bass and drums and that’s it.

Anyone who actually knows anything about the history of Metal will understand that the entire point of it was to do something different from all the other forms of music out there and that by its very nature, Metal is a rebellious and capricious beast. The point of it was to rail against the norm, the boring, and lowest common denominator cookie cutter music. There have been times when it has been wildly inventive. There have been times where it has stagnated horribly and got stuck very much in a rut of roaring and not much else. There have been times where the form has almost died out, crushed under the weight of R ‘n’ B, or Grunge, or whichever short-lived trend in Metal mutated it, like Nu-Metal, but it has always endured and it is rarely because of the Status Quo-shirted old boys sat muttering in the corner about how Black Metal is just fucking noise and how David Coverdale was the consummate Rock frontman (just the same as they have been doing for the past thirty years) while they ogle the young Goth girls on the dancefloor and talk about the latest AC/DC patch they have on their extremely tattered battle jacket. It has survived because of the people like YOU who are reading this. The people who truly love their music and are not afraid to go exploring and understand that music morphs into endless forms most beautiful, to coin a Nightwish lyric. How many inquisitive youngsters have been turned off from Metal because of the disgruntled grumbling of a few traditionalists? And their taste and interest in Metal has been irrevocably destroyed because of the actions of a few? People who tell others who and what they should like?

Now, I know that I do the same, but that is my job as a reviewer and a critic and I write about many different genres of Metal and Extreme music. I don’t tell people who they should like, just who I do and don’t like with a view to giving my readers an informed view as to who it is worth spending their hard-earned money on. It’s not the same as ridiculing a young person who is listening to and enjoying the likes of Avenged Sevenfold or the Murderdolls, or whichever “mainstream” Metal band they have got into the music with. They are particularly vituperative about Ghost, because of their easily likeable mythos and the accessibility of their music. Sleep Token upsets them all as well, as their sound, with its strong percussive bent, seems to upset people of a certain age. Well, that’s what Metal is supposed to fucking do! I am of the opinion that they can all shut the fuck up. They have their Twisted Sister and early Def Leppard records and enjoy them. It doesn’t give them the right to attempt to dictate what everyone else should be doing, in their redundant opinion.

It is rarely the ladies who have such negative opinions of new music, it should be said, and indeed our very own Metal Mum Beth Morait, and our esteemed Ma’am Of War Laura Barnes are most definitely fans of the traditional as well as the modern. And that is how it should be. It is FINE to like everything. It doesn’t make you (or us at Ever Metal) a better person if we are having a bash at someone for liking Slipknot or Five Finger Death Punch. You could have said the same about the young Dark Juan for getting into Metal via Iron Maiden – a vitally important band nowadays to be sure, but one who were not actually that relevant at the time of my introduction to the music, and one whose relevance was being questioned the gatekeepers of the time, because they were of the opinion that Maiden weren’t as good as Ronnie James Dio, or Rainbow and that Metal started and stopped with Black Sabbath. It didn’t.

However, we should always venerate the music of the past, because without it we wouldn’t have the wide-ranging and vibrant music we have now without it. We couldn’t have a Vexing Hex or Hail Darkness without a Black Sabbath or a Mountain. We couldn’t have a Coheed and Cambria without King Crimson. I love the old stuff – you’ll be just as likely to find me listening to Proto- Metallers Sir Lord Baltimore as you will find me grooving along to the latest Cold In Berlin EP. But, and this is the salient point – Metal has evolved. It has split into many genres and types, from the likes of Ghost referencing the Metal of the late 70s and dragging it into their strange little universe, to Mushroomhead and Slipknot wearing masks and building a mythos into their music as it mutates away from the Nu-Metal roots they grew from, to the Extreme music of the likes of Onchocerciasis Esophagogastroduodenoscopy and Olivia Neutered John. Metal these days is unrecognisable to the gatekeepers of the old guard, and so it bloody should be. No music remains untouched by progress, and we are lucky to have a style of music that still is able to take inspiration from the origins of its sound and use them to create something new and wonderful. There has never been a better time to be a Metal fan, and fuck what the grown-ups say. Let them bask in their nostalgia for a time when girls had bleach-blonde, backcombed hair and were seen as nothing but sex objects in a short denim skirt, while long-haired “real men” downed Jack by the bottle and drugs by the gram and fucked anything with a pulse without even a qualm about the feelings of who they were screwing. Let them relive their pathetic fantasies and search their miniscule horizons, where nothing new or exciting ever happens and they go to the same five venues to watch the same five bands over and over again. 

And also remember, when we are all busily having a pop at the likes of Disturbed (for the music, leaving out the politics of David Draiman), and Five Finger Death Punch and Avenged Sevenfold for their sound – remember this, they represent the gateway for the new listener to come into our world and be part of it. There is nothing wrong with that, and to mock them for their service in keeping our scene alive by actually attracting fans is disingenuous when we all came into Metal through some kind of mainstream route – for me it was Iron Maiden, W.A.S.P and Metallica.

Or you can be what you are supposed to be, an intrepid explorer into the realms of all different kinds of music that are still Metal, but in many different, exciting shapes and flavours.

Ignore the gatekeepers and listen to your heart. And the Metal, no matter what it is.

Disclaimer: This article is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.