March 4, 2004: Heavy Metal is Gay

Since I haven't really touched on anything musical for a while, I figured I needed to do a generalized heavy metal misanthropic hate rant. But where to begin, where to begin... Okay, here we go...

First of all, let me say that I love Anthrax. And while Stomp 442 and Volume 8 weren't exactly masterpieces, at least in my opinion, they have never released a really bad album. But goddammit, Charlie Benante, you are an absolute, whiny, blubbering, annoying sore loser of a total vagina. Yeah, I know "Black Lodge" got you on MTV and sold you a million records, and that's great. And I also know that you keep getting dropped by labels, and We've Come for You All (which I thought was the best thing anyone put out last year) is doing worse sales than the baby back ribs stand outside the Earth Crisis concert. But goddammit, Charlie, shut the fuck up about it! I'm sick of heading over to Blabbermouth and seeing a new rant/interview/whatever by this woman, bitching about how metal is dead and Americans are all stupid, because your fucking record didn't sell. Dude, that's just what happens! Prong was getting pre-midnight airplay around the same time, and I don't see them selling out arenas. I also don't see Tommy Victor throwing a bitch-fit about it every three days. The reason you're shit doesn't sell anymore isn't because of Korn, Limp Bizkit, or MTV. (And weren't you guys bragging about inventing the metal/rap hybrid a few years ago? And aren't you STILL always kissing Slipknot's ass?) And don;t give me that shit about metal being dead in America, because bands like Iron Maiden, Megadeth, and Pantera can still sell millions of records whenever they feel like it, and the biggest goddamn concert tour is always Ozzfest, featuring such non-metal acts as Dimmu Borgir and Shadows Fall. The reason you're going broke is simple: It's because you're putting out shit that people won't buy. Simple as that. Here's what happened: You were a thrash band, and people were into thrash at the time, so they bought a lot of it. Right on. Then, you changed a little, slowing down, lightening up a bit, and getting a little more melodic and doing slow songs and shit, and people really dug it. Cool. Thing is, people don't want that anymore. Let me see how I can explain this... Let's use a wrestling analogy, as always. The WWF was pretty big. Then, they decided to do things a little differently, and millions of people who had never cared about wrestling started watching and business was huge. However, this pissed off much of the core fanbase who had stuck with them for years, but no one noticed with all the "casual fans" around. But then, the casual fans found something new to occupy their time, and business ended up being a little worse than before, with the original core reduced so much. Basically, when you try to be all things for all people, you end up not being shit for anybody. You can't have an album with a thrash song, a ballad, an arena rock song, a southern rock song, and so on, and so forth, and expect it to be embraced by millions. Metal fans have always hated anything resembling change or variety, and the mainstream is usually too dumb to even handle something like that. You put out an album that was huge, you tried to go further in that direction while still being a respected metal band, you tried to be metal while also being "rock stars," you gambled, and you lost. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you're not selling millions (or hundreds of thousands) anymore, I'm sorry you're not getting invited to be guest stars on Married With Children or News Radio Anymore, and I'm sorry metal left you guys behind, because goddammit, it left me behind, too. But stop being such a fucking pussy, and take it like man. People aren't going to go, "oh, what a pussy-assed bitch! I better check his band out!" It didn't work for Axl Rose or Fred Durst, and it's not working for you, Charlie. Shut up and drum.

And speaking of metal leaving someone behind... Fuck brutality. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of every band worrying about being the most brutal band alive and not worrying about being any fucking good. "The production is so bad that you can't hear any difference between the guy hitting a string once and hitting it twenty times, the drummer is doing a random-ass blast beat that doesn't fit with the song at all, the singer sounds like water going down a bathtub drain and I don't think he's even forming words, you can't tell when one song ends and the next begins because they're all the same song, and I already can't remember if this is Band A or Band B, because they sound exactly alike, but goddammit, this is totally Br0oTal, dude! It rules!" Fuck you, and fuck your music, if you think like that. I'm sick of this unspoken pissing contest in metal, where every band is trying to out-brutal each other, with no regard for actually making decent fucking music. And the fact that the fans accept and even encourage this shit makes me hate metal even more. It's like there's a large segment of the metalhead population these days that writes off anything as "faggy shit" that doesn't have singer who gargles Drano, and then tells you to "go back to your nu-metal glam rock shit, faggot" when you say anything remotely not-nice about one of their bands, and it gets on my nerves. I'm sorry. If it degrades into a jumbled wall of noise, it barely qualifies as music, and then it only qualifies as shitty music. It's not a crime to not always play at six million beats per second, there's no rule that says you're not "heavy" if you have a singer who just yells, shouts, or -and I know this is almost unthinkable - actually sings, rather than burping the alphabet for three minutes, and music is not an extension of your dick, so no matter how many Cattle Decapitation CDs you download off the internet, you still suck. There, I've said it. Now, I'm going to go listen to Ugly MOTHERFUCKING Kid Joe for a while.

And while I'm on the subject of music that all sounds exactly alike, don't you miss the days when heavy metal as a genre featured at least twenty or so singers, total? Now, it's like there's a few thousand bands with like less than ten between them all. There's the death metal grunty guy, the black metal screechy guy, the nu-metal "I wasn't good enough to be in a boy band, so this is the shit I have to put up with" guy, and the "I really want to sound exactly like Phil Anselmo, but I also want to make people think I like death metal, so I'll just scream at the top of my lungs for the entire song with no variation in tone or pitch, ever" guy. And they all suck.

And I know it's not really metal, but I saw it on Headbanger's Ball and I don't update the Krap page anymore, so it'll go here. Screw you, it's my web page. MINE. Anyway, I just saw Korn's new video, "Y'all Want a Single" this weekend, and it brought up many interesting points. About how the music industry is controlled by a handfull of huge corporations, and how all music is basically the same, formulated crap that's meant to sell records only, and to not mean anything artisitcally, and all sorts of stuff along those lines. And really, I think they're right on a lot of those points. It's just that... Well... THEY'RE BITCHING ABOUT THEMSELVES! YOUR CDS ARE RELEASED BY EPIC RECORDS! MOST OF YOUR SONGS SOUND THE SAME! YOU "GET TO 'THE HOOK' IN UNDER 90 SECONDS" IN YOUR SONGS! YOU LET AN MTV CONTEST PICK THE COVER OPF YOUR ALBUM! YOUR SONGS ARE REPEATED ENDLESSLY ON EVERY ROCK RADIO STATION! YOUR MUSIC IS IN COMMERCIALS AND VIDEO GAMES! YOUR BOY DID A FUCKING CALVIN KLEIN AD! SHIT! FUCK! FUCKING CUNT ASS BITCH FUCK SHIT BASTARD RABBIT-HOLE FUCKING FUCK! There, I've said it. To call the video "somewhat hypocritical" would be along the same lines of calling Jesus Christ "somewhat of a celebrity," or calling Kelly Osbourne "somewhat of an talentless moo-cow." Thing is, when their next album tanks, they'll have an out now, and can blame it on the record company screwing them over because of this video, just like Metallica could use the "they downloaded our stuff, WAAAAAAAA" excuse for how relatively bad Taint Anger did. Man, I hate musicians.

While I'm on the nu-metal subject, another thing I hate is that I just realized that I now have one reason to not hate Godsmack. You see, somewhere, some chubby teenage girl who thinks buying those silly-ass pants with all the straps hanging off the back and throwing a Korn CD next to their Avril Lavigne and Garth Brooks CDs means they're a "goth" is going to get pregnant by her dopey Eminem-looking boyfriend in his early-to-mid twenties. (who may or may not skip town - depends on how scary-looking the chick's dad is) And while all the other chubby teenage goth girls are giving their kids names like "Draven," (Because it's the guy from The Crow, and naming their kid "The Crow" might get his ass kicked someday) "Dyrknyss," (Because "Darkness" would be too much of a boring, traditional name) and "Reznora," (the A is on the end, because "Reznor" isn't a girl's name, you know?) this one particular chubby teenage goth girl is going to name her son "Sully." And that's a damn fine name. Thank you, Godsmack. Thank you.