Speaking as someone who enjoys a staggering variety of music from a plethora of genres, I find it perfectly understandable that someone might not like Metal - tastes differ after all. Hatred though is harder to write off as an honest reaction to the genre, because the implication of such a statement is that you not only do not like Metal, you actively resent its existence.
The reason I take statements like that with a grain of salt is the same reason I take statements about Pop or Rap like that at face value - hatred
strongly implies familiarity turned to loathing; it is very easy to imagine someone becoming inundated with Pop or Rap music and consequently growing to despise the entire genre. But Metal? Unless someone very close to you is continuously blasting it at all hours, you kind of have to
go looking for it - if the first scenario doesn't describe you, just how the hell would someone who "hates" Metal even
become familiar enough with it to decide they do in fact hate it?
Which brings us to why most such claims are bullshit - your average person on the street
doesn't actually know what Metal is. Tell someone that you hate Pop or Rap and whether or not they
agree with you, the pervasive nature of those mediums is such that they should at least be able to call to mind multiple
examples from those genres. Tell someone you like/hate Metal though? Unless you're talking to an aficionado you might as well be speaking in a made-up language you learned from a sentient hunk of Gouda - that statement doesn't possess meaning in and of itself.
The public
thinks it knows exactly what Metal is though, and to an extent they
do, because the stereotypical "Metal band" the public thinks of when you say "Metal band"
actually exists - the problem is that there's a very broad selection of styles and approaches to the medium that all fall under the general umbrella of "Metal", and in the mind of the general public all Metal bands sound exactly the same: like angry noise. And all Metal bands look like the most ridiculous examples of the arguably least commercial sub-genres. Also it's all about Satan.
Imagine the only Rock band you had
ever heard of was Coldplay, and that you don't really like Coldplay at all (if you're like me that won't be very hard) - how likely is it that you'd be receptive to listening to a "great new Rock band!" that a friend wants you to listen to if, to you, Rock is
defined by a band you cannot take seriously? Well that's pretty much where Metal finds itself in the minds of the general populace - isolated examples or stereotypes that are actually perfectly valid providing you apply them to
tiny fragments of the whole and not
the entire genre are what the public thinks of when you say "Metal". They might even like it and not know it, blithely enjoying the infrequent examples that crop up in films or what have you without understanding that what they're listening to is in fact
Metal, while assuming they
hate Metal because "it's all grunting like angry gorillas combined with backing music that sounds like jackhammers and controlled demolition".
The notion that the OP described (that listening to Metal could lead an already depressed person to suicide) is pretty far-fetched, but there are certainly bands out there that I can't see
helping someone who suffers from depression improve their mindset. But to suggest that Metal isn't good music for suicidal people to listen to is completely silly because I can point to
entire sub-genres that are almost uniformly
uplifting - the only thing you can genuinely say that
all Metal bands have in common is that their music is the sort of harder-edged Rock that sits at the point where you can no longer accurately describe them simply as a Rock band. That's a pretty damn vast musical space though.
In my personal experience I've found that I can almost always convince even those you'd most expect to
genuinely hate Metal of the merits to be found within the genre - my sister will tell you she doesn't like Metal, and then turn around and listen to a bunch of female-fronted Symphonic Metal acts I introduced her to, or tell me "I like that! What is it?" while I'm listening to Elvenking only to be told "An Italian Folk Metal band!"; I got my father hooked on Symphonic Metal and certain subsets of Progressive Metal (he absolutely
adores Arjen Lucassen's Guilt Machine) and he almost universally despises anything with an electric guitar in it! Just about anyone I interact with here in meatspace who broaches the topic of music invariably leaves with
some appreciation for one of the various obscure European Metal bands I listen to.
Heck, I've convinced total strangers on the internet of their dormant enthusiasm for the genre - I've even convinced someone who gravitates almost exclusively to the sort of mellow Indie Rock and low-key Electronica that I can call "wussy" without really doing it a disservice of the relative merits of various Metal bands; unless you're someone like my mother who absolutely won't listen to anything outside of the
extremely narrow band of music she enjoys[footnote]And has legitimately hated EVERY SINGLE THING outside that 'safe zone' that I've tried to play for her over the years - she has probably the narrowest musical focus I've ever encountered.[/footnote], there is probably some variety of Metal that will appeal to you. Unless some well-meaning musical evangelist sets about introducing you to it though, you'll probably go on "hating Metal" forever, without ever understanding why that's silly.
And that is why so many people hate Metal - they're operating on a very widely held misconception that nobody has ever bothered trying to dispel for them.
FightThePower said:
I don't like Heavy Metal because I don't like the sound of it (the Guitar Riffs and the screaming...yeah no. I am well aware that a lot of Metal doesn't involve the latter, though)
Technically it doesn't even necessarily involve
the former.
There's no rule that says you have to have guitars in a Metal band - Apocalyptica gets along just fine with cellos.
