Ok. Picture the scene. Its a well known retailer of newspapers and magazines and I am queuing with two purchases. Firstly, my daily newspaper- a well known broadsheet, famed for exposing MPs expense scandals. My second is a copy of Metal Hammer, perhaps the best known monthly heavy metal/rock/alt magazine in the UK. As it’s a weekday and I hold down a reasonable job I’m in a suit. I dutifully place both items on the counter for the sales assistant to deal with. Newspaper scanned as per normal and barely a scintilla of recognition from my server. And then they scan Metal Hammer. And the server looks at me and then looks at the cover of the magazine. and then looks at me with a growing realisation that, yes I am buying this magazine and yes I am in my 40s and yes I do probably have a mortgage/car/overdraft/all of the aforementioned. And I must be a freak.

It was if I had put a huge pile of hardcore pornography on the counter not a daft little music paper. But it got me thinking: just what is it about heavy metal that still, some forty years after its creation, do people find so fearful, so strange and so outre? And why is it that you are supposed to “grow out of it” when you get to a certain age?

I like metal because it is full of energy, creativity, dynamism and genuine eccentricity. Dont get me wrong- there are some bad metal bands, some inept metal bands and some so goddamnawfulpleasedontdarkenmydooragain metal bands. But that’s the same with ANY genre. I like metal because the fans are so damn nice. I would rather- as I did- spend a weekend at the Sonisphere festival in Knebworth surrounded by 50,000 metalheads where there was not one ounce of trouble that I witnessed, nor really a hint of it, than take my chances with the quasi football hooligans that ruined my experience at Oasis.

I do like the fact that there remains an element of slight menace about metal but, honestly, the collected hordes of satan are hardly taking over now are they? Anyway, I like it. There.Said it.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 14:30 and is filed under Music News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.