Top 10 Most Annoying Things About Metal Music

Not many people know that the members of Black Sabbath, one of the first popular metal bands, were all members of the Anglican church and prayed before every show.

This should be on top. In multiple countries, this has been the stereotype. Plus, it is total idiocy to call it "satanic" just because you think every metal band is a part of the Illuminatti. This kind of stupidity has spread in the internet, and even a user on this site still promotes this moronic misconception.

This one really irritates me, there are several "Christian based" bands out there. I'm catholic and I love Five Finger Death Punch, Slipknot, Killswitch Engage, and so on.

Tom Araya from Slayer is Christian. In fact, a lot of metal musicians practice Christianity.

I love metal, but these can go die in a hole! If your song has only one or two beat changes, that's fine. But if your beat changes every 15 seconds, it really makes the song hard to get into. The worst part about it is that metal would sound a lot better if it didn't have any beat changes. It's not like they're absolutely necessary. Lyrics and riffs would flow a lot better without beat changes. So how did they make it into metal anyway? I don't know, but it must have been some sort of freak accident. Beat changes are easily the most annoying thing in metal!

Beat changes are what that actually define a complex piece of music. Metal is complex, and any song which won't have much beat changes won't be called metal at least in my ears, and that would instead belong to normal alternative rock category.

I actually prefer to think beat changes add to the complexity of many songs.

Hey! I love tempo changes! It's one of my favorite things about metal.

While this can be annoying, I like to think that any music worth listening to takes time to get used to. Good, more complex music doesn't immediately appeal to the ears like simple-minded pop music does and its appeal lasts ages longer than pop. Of course, this primarily only concerns the musically-inclined. Most of society, truthfully, doesn't have the capacity to recognize and appreciate where the REAL quality music exists. All most people need to be happy with music is a beat, these days, it seems. The ability to dance to a song grants it superiority over the real quality stuff. You may dislike me for saying so, but it is honestly the truth, and I think (deep down) you see the truth of it, also.

True enough, no genre is for everyone, and one does have to get a taste of its diversity to fully appreciate this. It takes open-mindedness and imagination to make a meaningful decision as to which genres you like and dislike, but that doesn't make them discrete and entirely separate. Just as I've listened to a lot of music and it took me a while to find that electronic music was my jam, I'm sure that many metal fans, jazz fans, and such have done the same. In the mainstream media, people are forced to come to it immediately, and that is the ruination of their judgement.

Every item in this list (even my number 1 and 2) leads to this. There are so many things about metal that make me feel like I have to try to like it. I shouldn't have to work to like a bands music, and sometimes I feel like that's what I have to do. While once you memorize a song, it becomes your favorite song in the world, I still think repetitive listening is a hard price to pay.

Any song that takes time to be appreciated is the one that ends up in your all time favorites. Unlike the catchy ones, which are easily liked and easily forgotten.

I can't stand it when a band writes lyrics that seem to not have a pattern at all. It's like some bands write random sentences down and then try to put them to a pattern. If the lyrics are thought-provoking, it's a little easier to swallow, but still, patternless lyrics are a real pet peeve of mine.

Oh yeah definitely. It's why I've never liked Burzum that much. Unintelligable lyrics put with a simplistic, repetitive beat. Two things on this list already.

Oh my god, all those core kid and nu metal posers are the worst!

Growling in metal music, period, should not be viewed as good singing. You can't make out any of the words and that explains all of the flak about metal being Satanic. Sing like an actual human being!

Let me say this. Vocalists like John Tardy and Chris Barnes have great growls, but it would really help if you could hear their growls in their music. In most of their songs, their vocals are just a low rumble in the background.

I'm also sensitive to this but it's mostly in thrash, not much in other subgenres.

One of the reasons I like Randy Black (thrash/speed metal drummer) is that he uses lots of fills and also switches to short or long sections where double bass becomes a lead instrument. It breaks monotony although he uses snare drums a lot, too.
Example: Ultra-Motion by Annihilator. Double bass for a minute in the middle of the song is a real treat despite he doesn't take it slower.

I'm looking at you, Slayer. I get metal is supposed to be fast, but apparently speed comes at the price of having the most uninteresting drumbeats ever. Seriously, could you think of something besides hitting the snare drum over and over again? Maybe take it a little slower so you can add something of substance? Could you maybe make the double bass audible? I honestly don't care what you do, just learn a drum beat that's a little bit less snarey.

And who says Dave Lombardo is the best metal drummer?

You know what's worse than bad drumbeats? Bad drumbeats that don't follow the beat of the song! I thought the drums were supposed to be the rhythm, not a random banging noise that happens when it wants to. Or maybe the drums are right but everything else is off beat? I don't know but either way, it annoys me to death when the drums don't match up with the rest of the song.

You'd appreciate it if you realized how incredibly difficult off-beat drumming is. I play a lot of Dream Theater, and trust me they have some difficult stuff.

Next to guitar work, drums are the sickest instruments in metal music in my opinion. Offbeat drumming really shows the player's talent

Don't forget that riffs may play even a more important role than choruses in metal. Metal riffs are amazing and very often metal songs are remembered by their riffs.
But a good chorus is always welcome, too.

Example - Hall Of The Mountain King by Savatage. The chorus isn't long or catchy but you can't forget the riff and the vocals.

I get metal isn't supposed to be really catchy, but I would like something to remember the song by. The point of a chorus is to stand out from the rest of the song and be the part of the song that you can identify the song by. A lot of choruses in metal don't have this, meaning that it's usually hard to remember how the song goes.

They are poser metal bands and this is should be at number one.

I'm looking at you, hair metal.

Oh yeah, Christian metal is based upon lyrical themes and it isn't a music genre. The case with Viking metal is even more complicated because there is a metal subgenre called viking metal based on specific music features. Viking metal is basically a subgenre of black metal (Bathory) but many people think that every song about vikings is viking metal. For example, Amon Amarth sing about the vikings but they aren't viking metal, they are death metal. Turisas aren't viking metal either.

This is why I've never liked the term "Christian Metal." I've never understood why people can't look at it as, for example, thrash metal with Christian lyrics. I guess we could use the term Christian metal, but we'll just have to call everything else Atheist metal.

It does not matter what the lyrical themes are; metal is metal.

Can you please accept the fact that metal is not the only music genre that has a reason to be here? People have different views and different tastes, and you'll find that there are other genres which take just as much hard work and make just as much of a connection with people.

Nu metal and rap metal are not metal. Sorry. The only decent example I can think of where these beats mixing with metal is not even metal; "Sober" by Bad Wolves is more of a soft rock/light metal ballad.

You can't mix the worst genre of music with the best, it's not allowed!

This actually works sometimes.

There's nothing that bad with it.

What's a strong growl? To me, Chuck Schuldiner and Randy Blythe are examples of strong growlers. The thing that makes their growls so awesome to me is the roughness. It sounds less human and more demonic, which is how you want to sound when you sing metal. A lot of early screamers, such as Tom Araya, don't seem to have this same grit to me. His voice sounds more like a yell than a scream, and I find it really obnoxious. I know I'm pretty much alone on this, but I find vocalists like this to be slightly annoying.

Weak growls are not typical for metal and it would be incorrect to generalize. Come on, metal is exactly the place where one can hear strong growls.

Moreover, it's very easy to avoid weak growlers - there are several weak growlers out of thousands and I just don't listen to them. Not a big deal.

Black Metal causes a lot of violence, but it doesn't affect me. I think if black metal musicians want to be all satanic and kill and burn everything, that's fine. Just stay away from me.

Black Metal Bands are posers of satanic cult, they are still humans but their brain is upside-down.

If whoever added this can name five of those bands, then I'll take them seriously.

These bands created the stereotype of Metal.

Several songs are not really representative for the entire genre but anything forced is not good - outside metal it's the forced 'feel good' issue.

I'm indifferent to cursing - I'm OK with or without it. I don't mind but I don't need it either.

There's plenty of metal songs without cursing but this is one of the things I don't care for about the genre. That and the screaming.

Nightwish never had an explicit song.

What band is this? I can't read the dang logo!

I'm looking at you, Megadeth fans.