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When I saw this title, I was filled with wrath. Why, I asked myself, does heavy metal need defending? It is a genre of music, and therefore it is equally as valid a form of self expression as any of its more popular distant relations, such as rap, hip-hop and R&B. I freely admit to having very little patience for the world of mainstream pop and rap, but I'll grudgingly grant them the right to exist because they are music, and every genre caters for different tastes, and every genre has something to say. Why should metal be any different?

Then I thought about it a little more. I'm a die-hard metalhead who rarely (but occasionally) delves into other genres of music. Rarely, because metal offers me everything I need from music - melody, meaning, emotion and the enjoyment of pure skill. As a metalhead, I'm well-used to fielding questions like 'how can you understand that - it's just screaming' and 'doesn't it depress you?'. Or how about 'when are you going to grow out of it?' Many of these come from basically well-meaning people who, to borrow the teenager's complaint, don't 'get it'. Take my dad, for example (sorry Dad). He has an extensive knowledge of music, wide-ranging tastes that encompass most of the modern music genres and will listen to virtually anything. However, he has a considerable blind spot when it comes to metal. I even had an argument about it with him the other day, where he accused me of listening to 'trash that is just random noise, screaming and swearing.'

This seems to be the most common misconception about metal - that it merely consists of banging away at drums and guitar while screaming some violent lyrics at the top of your voice. I find this attitude both amusing and frustrating. While I certainly don't want metal to become mainstream, I do get annoyed on behalf of the musicians whose work is slated because of the genre they play in. Metal music is complex, multi-layered and emotional compared to the simple melodies and simplistic commercial lyrics of pop. That, I think, is why many people class metal as 'unlistenable'. Their ears simply aren't used to it. I feel pity for them, as they clearly don't know what they are missing. Too accustomed to the bland nature of much modern music where songs rarely exceed three and a half minutes, and whose lyrics are all variations on the same themes of money and sex, they simply don't know what to do with a song that has multiple melodies that combine to create new or unusual sounds and lyrics that

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