What does Heavy Metal mean to you?(or extreme music)

[Generubin]

it's also kind of ensured that i don't fall in with the groups of typical high school idiots who build their lives on blowjobs and beer. sometimes alienating yourself can be better for you

and muddin. Don't forget about the muddin

[Acidic Consumption]

it's the music and it's a lifestyle. We live, bleed, and die metal. Metal is always there and it never gets old. I can always dig up some old metal and it takes me back and tells me all the other shit in the world is trivial, all i need is my metal!!

[Moloc]

I like how we all come from all sorts of different walks of life. I'm a stay-at-home dad. Knucklehead is a lawyer. I've met two people working on their PhD's. I've met a "ditch bitch." I enjoy how metal is part of your blood no matter what kind of other world you also happen to inhabit. And none of us gives a flying fuck what others think of us!

[Strange]

I like pretty much every kind of music to some degree, but I like Metal more than all of the rest of it combined. I've never really thought about why, but ever since I was a little kid I've loved the sound, the energy, the imagery... Sometimes the message is brilliant and sometimes it's crap, but as long as the delivery is solid then I really don't care. The lyrics in general speak to me more than any vacuous pop bullshit or gangster rap or whatever. And while I've always enjoyed being different than most people, I've always felt a kind of universal comeraderie with other Metalheads.

Example: Package did a show several years ago with a band from Argentina called V1R7U4L (Virtual). The drummer and I held a 15 minute conversation consisting of nothing but band and musicians names, nods of assent and various growls and hand gestures. Afterwards my wife just looked at me and said "That was amazing." haha Also, after our set the singer came up to me and headbutted me. Not trying to kill me or anything, but more as a sign of respect. To this day I feel it's one of the highest compliments I've ever been paid. No normal person would ever get this. Lots of people like pop music but I highly doubt many people feel passionate about it.

[Metalfreak]

Lots of people like pop music but I highly doubt many people feel passionate about it.

I think you're right about that. Not all of my friends listen to metal and the ones who don't, listen to stuff on the radio. They aren't in love with whatever it is they listen to. They like it but they aren't about to go all out and spend hundreds of dollars to go see some band out of state like most of us do! Some of them will go to concerts, but it has to be in/ near Atlanta or else they won't go. (I'm speaking of my nonmetal friends, I'm not saying all nonmetalheads don't travel for shows! I know that some people will.)

Yeah, I also love the sense of comraderie amongst metalheads. I don't think you get that for most other forms of music. I love that I could be in some completely nonmetal place and just throw up the horns at another fellow metalhead and get the horns back and probably start geeking it up about what bands we've seen etc.

[Diana]

Our turntable is in the living room, so if I'm listening to it the husband is too. I was subjecting him to Sargeist one night against his will and he was again demanding to know what the appeal is and why I love it so much. I couldn't explain it to him. Then he said, "Well, it's honest. That's for sure." He's 100% Fuckin' A right about that. Mystery solved.

[SadisticRitual]

and muddin. Don't forget about the muddin

yes fortunately i never got my '95 Lexus LS 400 lifted. that would be atrocious

[stewvee]

Heavy Metal means my past, my adolesence and teenage years mostly.

Those times spent alone with LPs and tapes and magazines and headphoning music and thinking about fantastic things that had little to do with school or parents or problems normally facing adolescents or teenagers.

Now that I'm approaching middle-age it means all of these things still, but it's more a refuge than a signifier, where listening and living it is a continual rekindling of the past, my past, my former and current "me."

[Knucklehead]

This is an interesting question and one that I've been struggling with and (undoubtedly) over-thinking for several years now.

Originally, my attraction to metal was probably in part rooted in a rebellious impulse. But it also was something that transcended the mundane -- there were all these fantastic bands coming out of different parts of the country and Europe and my worldview was unquestionably stretched by it. And, it was so culturally marginal that really only my friends and I were listening to it. I'm guessing there were only a handful of people in my State that actually bought Endless Pain when I was a teen-ager, for instance. We were a small club and bound together by metal.

Of course, it also made me want to flip over cars and burn them. Which I counted as good. The music moved me deeply in ways I can't express.

But I can't really explain while I still listen to it, all these years. Certainly, there is a connection to my youth, as SV has observed. It is not mere nostalgia, but something deeper that that. And I no longer need the outlet for aggression, as the old testosterone levels are dwindling. I no longer have the impulse of teen rebellion. The downside to burning cars is too great at this stage of my life.

So I'm left in a bit of a quandary.

...

The only thing I can say definitively is that badcarburetor is right -- that shit just sounds good.

[stewvee]

It's not nostalgia, altough it gets a bad rap these days.

Heavy Metal is an activity. You incorporate it into so many aspects of your life, from record collecting and listening to that collection, to drawing analogues from pulp lit of Howard or high lit of Lovecraft, to banging at shows and drinking and listening to that collection and drinking and drawing analogues from pulp lit of Howard or high lit of Lovecraft...

Only other thing I can compare it to is being a redneck. There's the truck and the country music and the outdoorsy stuff and the drinking and the dipping and...

It's a total experience. Overwhelms and (mis)shapes your character. If you get into it early, it never ever goes away.

[Peanut Caravan]

If you get into it early, it never ever goes away.

This. I don't feel like I have a choice in the matter. Many people would ask me are you still going to listen to that when you get older? I wonder what they thought would happen. I would hit middle age and automatically develop a taste for Billy Joel and James Taylor.

[slut rag]

its weird to think that in the future, "old people" will be listening to cannibal corpse and the ilk.

[badcarburetor]

If you get into it early, it never ever goes away.

This. I don't feel like I have a choice in the matter. Many people would ask me are you still going to listen to that when you get older? I wonder what they thought would happen. I would hit middle age and automatically develop a taste for Billy Joel and James Taylor.

Yeah, this is one damed long phase. And I agree. I didn't have any choice. It just is who I am, like my politics, my (lack of religion), my soccer team...they are just things I didn't have a choice in. I could pretend to be someone else, but why?

For me it's all the shit together, metal, punk, glam, oi, deathrock, soul, reggae, to some extent garage, etc...I've been into all this shit my whole life. It's all the same thing. Sometimes I've been more connected to one scene than the others, but while scenes ebb and flow, my variety of records always spin. Right now metal is the most happening scene, there's constantly great records and shows. That's fine by me.

[Peanut Caravan]

This is fun to think about. Why did the music resonate with us so much? Why did this stick and something else did not? I was not always completely faithful to the metal. I strayed here and there to investigate other genres of music but it always seemed to pull me back somehow.

I feel a connection to it these days more than ever and I am not sure why.

[Peanut Caravan]

its weird to think that in the future, "old people" will be listening to cannibal corpse and the ilk.

That is a cool thought. I would love to see an old man bust out an air guitar solo with a shuffleboard pole while listening to Accept.