Metal is facing a decisive moment in time. As a genre and an entire sub culture, it’s threatened with a massive flux of outsider interest into what was once an isolated community forged in passion. Metal was a cause for tight bonds among like minded disillusioned youth that wanted nothing to do with the status quo, a lawless free for all where no ideology or point of view was too extreme. Thus grew a voice to rally against the farce of mainstream politics, social acceptability, resolute contentment with mundane lifestyles and herd mentality. Though acts like Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden were to find great success within the public large, they laid the groundwork for that rebel yell that gave the disgruntled youth the foundations for connecting with others so disconnected. And with such a ground roots movement that metal was, true artists and musicians who may have never have been given an opportunity to rise otherwise were now rising and exponentially so. Quickly NWOBHM became speed metal became death metal became black metal. Then, as with all great explosive cultural movements, metal began losing its traction and sight of its original goals of fighting against the mainstream culture of quantity over quality. But it is now that we see its greatest threat in its acceptance by the masses. Now it is being taken for a boutique exotic exploration into what most really don’t want to explore: cold unforgiving reality.

Because metal began to lose its core values, the community that was once so vibrant and connected began to fracture and its constituents began creating schisms within what should be a whole. Once upon a time a metal concert lineup featured a great diversity of metal sub-genres, from death metal to power metal, yet now see much more homogeneous line-ups featuring only bands that can neatly fit within the boundaries of genre. These sub genres have garnered ridiculous patriotism where fans are “too black metal to listen to death metal!” and “too death metal to appreciate power metal!”

So here we are faced with two options: allow metal to continue to divide itself into countless sub-genres and thus create deeper chasms within the community allowing for mainstream entities to bastardize. it is to say that metal was once truly diverse for its basis allowed for an immense level of creative exploration, but now it keeps fracturing deeper and deeper into subgenres in which there is little allowance for exploration, as the idea of what a band is supposed to supposed to sound like has become quite rigid, or posers can tack on superficial elements purely in the name of diversity because metal has made itself up for grabs) and manipulate metal’s current so-called diversity in the name globalist multicultural degeneracy.

Looking to our current DMU tyrant’s pushing of Christian ideals (be they metaphorical or sincere) we can see that he is truly giving out a call to metal’s real fan base (a.k.a. the not funderground) to once again unify. To embrace that bygone community that exhibited such strength in its bonds. To return to tradition community and culture. If we continue to let ourselves fall into the pits of fatalistic attitudes about the state of metal and allow ourselves to further disperse then we will have lost what made us so strong and allows the funderground to maintain its hold over us: our sense of unification in goals, movement and mentality. We can look to that age old aphorism that goes something like: divided will be conquered, but united we will stand strong. So look to the past with an eye on the future and see that we can overcome the pollution of our cherished music and culture and renew its purity in vision and execution.

 

Tags: death metal, Deus Vult, extreme metal, funderground, lifestyle, metal, metal culture, polarization