Poll: Why do lots of people hate Heavy Metal?

[Wardnath]

As to the throaty metal, seriously HOW DO THEY MAKE SOME OF THOSE SOUNDS? Marilyn Manson is about as rough as my throat can take.

A lot of practice.

I've been doing it for about a year now. Any longer and I could probably go toe to toe with some of the more (in)famous death metal vocalists.

I still don't know how this guy does it though.

 

[TRR]

One of my favourite songs is called "Heavy Metal (is the law)" by Helloween
one of the lines in the song is:
"If you don't feel it you won't understand."
and that's basically it.

 

[Macabre9037]

I used to be a metalhead. I played bass and sang in several metal bands in high school. I now hate it, main reason being I realized that every single person I knew that listened to metal was and immature dickhead. Thats not to say all of them are, but my personal experience forced me away from it.

 

[TheAceTheOne]

It depends on what you consider "Heavy Metal". If you mean Slayer, then it's good once in a while, but not my fave. If you mean some groovy metal that gravitates towards heavy metal, a la The Company Band, count me in. If you mean that screamy junk, count me out.

 

[Slaanax]

I like some lighter metal, and Nu-metal bands but like any real heavy metal just sounds like crap to me, I like the instrumental elements of it, but the screaming makes intolerable to me.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

At this point, it seems sort of crazy to me that anyone would say they dislike "metal".

Metal has such a ludicrous number of sub-genres that it's pretty damn unlikely that anyone hates ALL metal. For instance, I can't stand death metal or black metal, but I like a lot of power metal and most medieval metal.

Also, no nerd can resist the allure of Nightfall in Middle Earth.

 

[Ashcrexl]

some people cant hear any sort of tune in heavy metal just because of how heavily it's presented and only hear noise. i perfectly understand this because i dont like REALLY heavy metal like half of every slayer song and bands harder than them.

 

[MisterGobbles]

-snip-

I'd say more, but it'd be a copy of this. Lemme just say: Best. Opinion. Ever.

Ha, I'm glad someone thinks that =)

I really do think it's the screaming that puts people off though, I did not like screaming even when I was a huge fan of bands like Metallica (and some people don't even like those vocals). And bands like The Dilinger Escape Plan (arguably not metal, but a very anti-melodic band for the most part) I completely hated at first, but now they are some of my favorites. Metal, or the really heavy interpretations of metal, are an acquired taste for many people, and are simply not as easy to get into as something like pop.

Pop is an amazing genre, and can actually be pretty musically layered, but even with all that layering going on (listen to any Breathe Electric song) the song can mostly be reduced to simple chords and it would still be recognizable as the same song. And that's what most people remember when they listen to a pop song - those simple, catchy chords.

However, when you take something like The Dilinger Escape Plan, it's hard, except for in maybe about four or five of their songs, to discern a catchy melody. The things that are going on are so complex and jarring that they don't stick out in most people's minds as anything but noise, especially when they are so used to simple melodies and time signatures.

Even with something significantly more melodic, like say The Black Dahlia Murder (wow, two bands referencing historical events), the song can still not be reduced to simple chords and still has that abrasive, jarring element to it, especially in the screaming.

I'm not exactly suggesting that the reason people hate metal is that they are too shallow-minded that they can't appreciate things like complex time-signatures and songs made up of more than four chords. People like Tool don't they? And that band is mostly completely composed of complex time signatures. People like Pink Floyd, don't they? Their songs were long and pretty damn complex.

No, the reason why some people don't like metal, or mathcore, or whatever, is because the music can be abrasive and jarring in the way that no other genre except for maybe noise music can be. Some people just don't appreciate screaming and the musical structure of those genres and it can be literally hard for their brain to tell it apart from noise, even the more melodic bands like In Flames and such. Those people shouldn't dismiss metal as a form of music/art, but they don't have to like it either.

And people shouldn't be arrogant assholes toward anyone else about their musical tastes.