Metal Means... (Pt2)

*Disclaimer – more people into Metal is cool… people younger than me, who are into Metal do have brains. Metal bands, record companies, merchandisers etc are entitled to make money from whatever they do, if they want to. There has never been and there never will be a Golden Age of Metal... ta!*

This is how I remember it. Early nineties, big f**ked up hair; big, daft glasses, band t-shirts with skulls and angular band names, going to gigs and seeing the few other such atrocities and knowing – just knowing – that you were amongst your own people. Seeing a Metallica song once a year on TV and going berserk cos Metal was right up in peoples face.

The first time I heard Sepultura, I did believe that the Devil actually existed and had a band. I heard that awfulsome dirge of loosed anger and wanted to know if he actually thought in the same way I did; I wanted to know what the f**k Satan Cavalera was so pissed about. Sure enough, a few Machine Head and Fear Factory songs later – amongst many others, I realized that there was indeed a sort of shared Metal credo, a sort of unspoken, informal understanding that Metal was a combination of outrage, independence and pro-activity like; ‘stuff is s**t, I don’t like it so I best do something about it…’

Yeah… you just weren’t into metal unless you meant it. I think that things are a bit different today, no doubt, those a little longer in the tooth would have had similar things to say to my age-group. But the point is that Metal has gradually been absorbed into the mainstream, becoming an Establishment form of business, I mean, Iron Maiden T-Shirts being sold in Top Shop… you what?

When something becomes ‘mainstreamed’, and becomes part of the Establishment scenery of society, then it necessarily has it’s fangs pulled out. See, if something like Metal, is seen to be encouraging dissent amongst rational people, it is perceived as a threat to the way things are – the Establishment. Obviously this just will not do, and the threat has to be eliminated.

But it is not effective to smash dissent in the face with truncheons and smother it with overt repression. Martyrs are made thus, instead it is much more effective to absorb the cultural force (whatever it maybe – Metal, Punk, Hip Hop, Blues, R&B, Film, whatever) into business; make it a new, novel way for people to spend money. Impose some ideas of hierarchy; make it about big heroes and unattainable levels of celebrity; about the piercing, clothing and tattoos, about an image and crucially, maintain the rhetoric of ‘self-expression’, ‘individualism’ and dissent, to show what diversity your culture allows. Make it so when people say that ‘nobody tells me what to think’ or ‘I do what I want’ they are telling the truth, because they don’t need telling, they just adopt and internalize – then repeat - the mantras given to them.

Metal isn’t anything special in itself. The ideas that give Metal teeth are things shared by all manner of people; the bits of Metal that tell you to give the finger to anyone who tries to tread on you and to tell them to f**k off should be like friends you will never lose if you treat them with the honesty and respect they deserve. The same honesty and respect you and all people expect and demand.

Otherwise metal will go the way of Ernesto Guevara’s face, a sad relic of resistance turned into a exotic and risqué money-maker.

Peace,

Bing!x - http://www.bing-em-all.blogspot.com/