So heavy metal is a bunch of freaks screaming about Satan and death and killing people and hating the world, right? Metal is f*k the government, kill authority figures, darkness, drugs, and evil. Growling unintelligible lyrics screamed like banshees and demons, muical instruments abused in the way only metal abuses. I would like to say no to all of those stereotypes and tell you what metal is.

Metal is Gojira's album From Mars to Sirius advocating enviornmentalism and conservation of resources.

Metal is Iron Maiden singing of the great classics in songs such as "Brave New World", "Lord of the Flies", "Flight of Icarus", and "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

Metal is Iced Earth's interpretation of "Phantom of the Opera" and recount of the Divine Comedy in "Dante's Inferno".

Metal is System of a Down's advocacy of peace and protests of civilian bombing in "BOOM!". It's their advocacy of spirituality and words against the dehumanizing effects of science in "Science." Don't forget "BYOB"-Bring You Own Bombs, a protest to the war in Iraq.

Metal is Megadeth's extremely true warning about how aboslute power corrups aboslutely in "Symphony of Destruction" as well as their interpretation of the classic novel of the same name in their song "Of Mice and Men"

Metal is Symphony X recreated the epics Paradise Lost and The Odyssey their albums and songs of the same names as the epics they were based on.

Metal is Judas Priests' allusions to Nineteen Eighty-Four in "Electric Eye"

Metal is Sepultura basing their entire album A-Lex off of A Clockwork Orange

Metal is Trivium's re-telling of the deafeat of Cronus by Zeus in "He Who Spawned the Furies"

Metal is Cradle of Filth's account of the Spanish Inquisition in the song "For Those Who Died (Return to the Sabbat Mix)"

Metal is Slayer protesting the effects of PTSD on soldiers in "Eyes of the Insane"

Metal is Avenged Sevenfold recreated a chapter of Revelations in "The Beast and the Harlot"

Metal is Slipknot attacking the blindness of people to the problems of the world in "Psychosocial"

Is that enough to prove that culture and politics flood the genre? Metal is intelligent, and it is there to say something. Sometimes it's the only music with the stones that says what needs to be said. Are metalheads bitter to society? Not always, but a lot of the time yes. And why not? War, poverty , murder, greed, corruption, all of these world issues touch every human life in some way. Why does it have to be a bad thing? Without discontent there would be no revolution, without revolution there would be no change, and without change things could never improve. Is metal Satanic? Some of it, yes, but Sataic metal usually has interesting things to say about society and politics. Metal is one of the more intelligent genres of music. We shouldn't peg it as a bunch of dirty headbangers.

Learn more about this author, Kara Cain.
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