#Metalgate: MetalSucks Reaffirm Themselves as Social Justice Warriors and Leftist Apologists by Misinterpreting Metal Lyrics

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Axl Rosenberg (Matt Goldberg) of metalcore blog MetalSucks recently reaffirmed his website’s social justice warrior stance in an editorial entitled “Stop Saying Politics Have No Place in Metal”. Rosenberg points out that Tony Iommi’s guitar tone was a direct result of the  socioeconomic circumstances of his upbringing but incorrectly assumes that Black Sabbath’s lyrics were written by Ozzy Osbourne’s even rougher childhood when they were in fact primarily written by Geezer Butler who was obsessed with the occult, the work of Aleister Crowley, and horror fiction and films. Rosenberg then uses the lyrics from “War Pigs” to attempt to show that Black Sabbath had strong political undercurrent. All dedicated fans of the band know that the song was originally titled “Walpurgis” about the Witches Sabbath on Walpurgis Night and the label forced them to change the title as they thought it too overly satanic. The anti-war lines are just expressing that politicians and generals sending off young men to die for only the benefit of the leaders in the rear is evil too and actually reflects popular opinions of World War I as much as Vietnam. Attempting to attach any political significance to these is preposterous.

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The Difficulties of Folk Metal: Part II

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Article by Johan P.

This text is a continuation of the previously published article, The Difficulties of Folk Metal. As stated in Part I, the threefold aim of this multi-part article is, in rough terms, to: 1. Give a short introduction to the subject, 2. Point out some of the difficulties connected with integrating folk music into metal and finally, 3. Provide alternative methods of integration. Part II will be dedicated to the second part of this quest.

Naturally, there are limits regarding the scope of my endeavor – the most obvious demarcation being that the article primarily focuses on Swedish folk music. In my view, the critique of folk metal is an ongoing project, and this article should not be seen as an exhaustive treatment of the subject at hand.

So, if someone else out there finds the subject interesting, you are more than welcome to make contributions. It could be in the form of additional material (metal or folk related) and complementary ideas to enhance the project. For example, the depth and applicability of the arguments presented below would surely benefit if the scope could be expanded to include other forms of traditional music.

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Why Heavy Metal Lost The Culture War

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There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.1

Many metal-heads think that metal died out as a genre because it went corporate and lost its edge. Undoubtedly more commercialized metal appeared, as it always does whenever a genre becomes popular and therefore, profitable. There is more to it than that, however, as larger cultural forces and schemes were at play.

The question of commercialism arose because there was a bridge between power metal/jock metal (e.g. Korn) and more old school thrash metal (Metallica/Slayer) which was never gapped. This paralleled the gap of a decade earlier, when the gap between metal bands like Motorhead and hard rock bands like Van Halen divided the fanbase between album listeners and radio listeners. This gave rise to entire subgenres like black metal, death metal and grindcore which were deliberately designed to avoid having large-scale commercial success. That in turn triggered the rise of the 1990s version of glam, grunge, which was basically slowed-down indie-rock influenced hard rock.

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