It's all a question of understanding
It seems to me that the reason heavy metal garners so much stick is it's depiction in the media. I know this is an argument that has been shouted again and again, but it still rings true. When you have a band like Slipknot banned in Singapore because a fan hospitalized three other concertgoers with a baseball bat (god knows how he got it past security, but that's not the issue) or the general image that metal has always had in public press (Ozzy Osbourne biting the heads off bats, anyone? Or maybe just the corpsepaint of any deathmetal band you care to name?) It all adds up to the general populace (those who don't listen to metal) having a bias against it from the get-go. Throw in an incident where someone who is mentally unstable can be linked in any way to the music, and it's the music industry's very own "Video-games made my child a raving lunatic" media explosion all over again.
If we break it down, there are roughly four types of people;
1) There are those that
embrace metal, in all its melodic and guttural glory, and love the community and the fellowship that comes with being a fan of this music;
2) There are those that appreciate it for the music and the sense of community it brings;
3) There are those that couldn't give a shit, and have no love or hate either way (see - Philistine
);
4) And there are those who fear metal, because through all it's bad press and negative coverage has been linked to satanism and a whole host of other
evil things.
Quite simply, these people are Jam's mom from Detroit Rock City: People who fear what they don't understand, who
fear what isn't laid out to them in black and white without colourful or evocative imagery, and people who like the phrases "It's a jersey thing", "I'mma cap that hoe" and "smack a ***** upside the head"
Maybe I'm going a bit far with the last point, but you get the idea
For the TL/DR crowd: People hate what they can't understand, which is a lot for some people
