The "power ballad" and "Metal" are diametrical opposites, as impossible to reconcile as Gary Charone and Van Halen and for incredibly good reason: a ballad by definition is sentimental.

To paraphrase a popular catchphrase from a later era: "There's no crying in Metal."

Metal is all about cars and girls and getting drunk. It is about losing a poker game or getting into a bar fight. It is geared to men who are not yet men but are trying to become men and have found that all things masculine come in the form of a jeering crash of violent cymbals and scathing guitar riffs and screeching howls.

It is not about words.

Hell, it's not even necessarily about music.

It's about release.

Sentimentality has no place in metal, and yet, the power ballad gained favor because metal bands were, at their core, isolating fifty percent of their audience. If there was only something to lure the teenage girls...something more than skintight leather pants that just might make their fathers convulse with cerebral hemorhages...and so, the world witnessed the birth of the power ballad and the death of Metal.

The price for this shameless prostitution is that for years and years boys remained boys.

As a post-script, Bon Scott never would have sung a ballad. He died prematurely by suffocating on his own vomit during a drunken stupor. He is, was, and forever will be, Metal.

Learn more about this author, H. Aslan Aslani-Far.
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