Top Ten Problems with the Extreme Metal Community

I don't have anything against metal music, but the community has a considerable share of whiny prepubescent kids who praise metal and actively go out of their way to criticize other genres. This behavior is far more prevalent in the metalhead community than any other.

Additionally, there are the guys who keep looking at the music industry with their close-minded 'Ah, the 90s were great' bubble. I've witnessed certain people in the metalhead community criticize 10-11 year-olds for liking Bieber and Lil Wayne. How low do you have to be to talk badly about children over a simple difference of opinion?

This is almost exclusive to black metal, which prevents it from being the biggest problem. But the fact remains that Nazism in general speaks for itself as a problem. It is made even stranger when considering that a good amount of black metal comes from areas of the world directly affected by Hitler.

See, for instance, the general reaction to Dimmu Borgir, a band that combines traditional black metal elements with symphonic elements. Among the extreme metal community, the band is almost universally panned (save for the first two albums) for not having some of the more brutal elements of black metal.

It should be encouraged for bands to experiment, not frowned upon.

Any kind of change is frowned upon. If you get softer and not heavier, or if you go more commercial, the Metallica effect happens. If you don't like a band's new sound, then don't listen to it. Listen to the music you want and stop complaining.

For example, Chuck Schuldiner (commonly referred to as the Godfather of Death Metal) once said, "I would like to see metal become more of a united thing. I'm tired of people breaking things down into categories like thrash metal and death metal. I think people tend to stick to one category, and I want people to support all kinds of bands, whether it be Slayer or Queensryche or Death. I miss the days when it was acceptable to listen to everything from Priest and Maiden to Slayer and Venom."

So why do some members of the extreme metal community ignore the founder of death metal's own words?

An example of this is the murder of Euronymous of Mayhem by Varg of Burzum. This is either completely ignored by fans of Burzum or passed off as Euronymous being a jerk (not their actual words) and thus deserving to die (Source: Comment section of a video of Dunkelheit by Burzum).

That about sums it up.

I've been into metal for more than three years, and I never could wrap my head around why people condone the murder of Euronymous. He was very moronic and egotistical, but that doesn't mean he deserved to get killed. The same thing goes for the church burnings. Just because you don't like religion does not make it okay to destroy a church.

See Ignorance of the actions of band members.

See Experimentation is frowned upon.

Elitists don't know how to respect other opinions. This is one of the reasons why metalheads have a bad reputation.

They are guys who play music. Most of them are like you and me, just regular people.

I'm sure many will argue that metal isn't rock. But look at it. Metal: Uses mostly guitars, bass, and drums. Rock: Uses mostly guitars, bass, and drums. The difference is metal is a bit more intense. Metal is not much of its own genre. In fact, it's way more of a sub-genre of rock!

Proof? The earliest records of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest.

They can't admit that what they are listening to started in the Fifties (the mix of white and black music). It seems they don't understand the word "progression" in rock's progression line. Just because they don't hear a "blues" or "rock and roll" element in today's metal doesn't mean that metal was invented suddenly from nothing.