Does anyone care about Heavy Metal music anymore? Is it relevant?

[Andrew NDB]

I mean, I never did (I was more of an old school gangsta rap guy, with a dusting of NIN and Marilyn Manson). But a lot of people did and/or do, even in my generation. I feel, though, that the argument as to "Is heavy metal still prevalent anymore?" quietly died over the last 10 years to where we know it's not... but there's people who still say it is.

What say you? Is it still popular or relevant to anyone who isn't, like, 40-60+?

[sdp]

I mostly grew out of it after my teens, I still like it but I prefer other genres now, but you have to remember that metal has more subgenres than you can think of which go in and out of style and while the stuff so yeah it's not any more dead than the average genre. If you get more specific like say glam metal which your post seems to be implying based on the age range then yeah that's very much dead and even then didn't that steel panther ban become pretty popular which just parodied for the most part those bands so..

[joefsas]

It's all I listen to.
I'd say I listen to the more modern genres though. Metalcore, deathcore etc...
It's hard to keep up with all the different types of metal nowadays

[AT-Man]

Some of my favorite bands are metal. I can't remember when was the last time I really got in to a new metal band, though.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

There are still many fans, but it was more exciting being a teenager in 1984 and listening to hard rock and heavy metal because the adult world then thought it was Devil's work.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

I really don't think it's "relevant" anymore. Doesn't stop it from being fvcking awesome.

[Andrew NDB]

Like, is it actually getting new fans?

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Like, is it actually getting new fans?

Well, it didn't get me until about a decade ago. I think it does, but it's more "niche" now, less mainstream. That's been my experience, at least.

And there's a lot of local metal bands in my area.

[AquaParade]

I do, but very particularly.

For instance, I only listen to a handful of Metal bands and they are all bands I've been listening to for over a decade. I'm not out there discovering new Metal music or anything like that. I simply follow the releases of the few Metal bands I'm interested in, or listen to old favorites that are no longer together.

I try not to get too finicky with genre, so pardon me if you don't consider any of these bands as "Metal", but I love Slipknot, Between the Buried and Me, and Embrace the End.
Actually, I did hear "Maximum the Hormone" recently, a kind of Metal/rock/punk band from overseas. Thought that was pretty cool.

[Prowler]

Well, the more mainstream metal belongs to the types that the likes of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Saxon and Metallic,a Slayer, Anthrax, etc. play. Traditional heavy metal and thrash metal. Those bands are all quite old now and no new ones of similar styles have been able to get as big as those so far.

Sub-genres like death and black were never meant to be really mainstream anyway. Some bands like Death and Cannibal Corpse and Burzum have gotten certain notoriety but not exactly Iron Maiden or Metallica level of recognition. It's not really stuff radios would want to play.

I guess metal suffers from a similar fate as rock music: Popular to a certain degree but not as much as it used to be. Notice how the big arena rock bands like Queen, The Rolling Stones, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, etc. are all very old or retired by now? And even grunge rock bands from the early-mid 90s such as Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam aren't exactly young or in their prime anymore.

I guess the current world prefers hip hop, EDM music and rnb, dunno. That being said, metal is quite popular in many parts of Europe and Latin America. It's a rather large sub-culture. It's no wonder countries like Finland, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Ukraine, Greece, Russia and Brazil have churned out a lot of fairly known bands in their sub-genres and niche audiences.

I was a metalhead in high school, and I'm not old. I was born in 1990. Not that hard to find metalheads in my city and metal concerts. We even have a couple of large metal festivals in our country.

[DarkFell]

Originally Posted by CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy

I really don't think it's "relevant" anymore. Doesn't stop it from being fvcking awesome.

That - that right up there. WORD.

I doubt that Heavy Metal genre will ever really go away; it'll play on public radio, streaming services, ect. Whatever is playing on the radio and whichever bands make it to Itunes, will continue to inspire people to make some Metal in any way they can, ranging from playing in a garage band to creating their own style of Metal in FL Studio. Granted the genre name can be changed into something entirely different, it'll probably still sound similar (or exactly like) Heavy Metal.

And like Cylons mentioned, we still get localized Heavy Metal bands that still play over here in our state.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Is is relevant? Sure, there will always be folks who connect to the sound, the themes and emotions common to metal bands. And like others have said, there are newer bands coming up in the genre all the time. Like a Swedish band I like, Lordi. Mr D is a HUGE fan of Iron Maiden and Queensryche. Got me into metal, even though I was never really a big fan growing up aside from a few bands like Metallica and G&R.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by MsMarvelDuckie

Lordi

Lordi is from Finland. In May 2006, their song Hard Rock Hallelujah won the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest in Athens, Greece.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Original TMNT Cartoon Fan

Lordi is from Finland. In May 2006, their song Hard Rock Hallelujah won the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest in Athens, Greece.

Only year I gave a **** about that crappy contest.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Originally Posted by Original TMNT Cartoon Fan

Lordi is from Finland. In May 2006, their song Hard Rock Hallelujah won the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest in Athens, Greece.

My bad. I misremembered which country they are from. Probably because I mixed it up with Nanne, who IS from there. (She is so freaking awesome!)

Hard Rock Hallelujah and Would You Love a Monster Man were the two songs that actually introduced me to them, via the movie Dark Floors.

[Leo656]

It's weird; I used to be way more into it - "Metal" was even my generally-accepted nickname in high school, even though I listened to more punk and 80s rock/metal than anything - but the farther I've gotten from my "angry youth" days, the less inclined I am to listen to it on a regular basis. I still do, but... some of that stuff is just exhausting after a while. Like, it was directly relevant to who I was at a certain point in my life, but then I wasn't the same person anymore, so once removed from all of that, the music didn't sound the same. Especially the more violent/aggressive type stuff. Sometimes I listen to some of it now and go, "Man, what reason does anyone have to be so angry?" Still love the guitars and the drums, but once I hit 30 I really started needing to hear things that were a bit more uplifting, sometimes. Not completely Instead Of, but In Addition To.

Like I never got into any of the Marilyn Manson stuff, or any of that. My wife loves Manson and frankly I find that completely ridiculous. Even when I was the age-appropriate intended audience for that stuff, I found it absurd, "try-hard", and totally manufactured. That "I cut myself because both my parents work and so nobody's around to tell me I'm special" stuff that "troubled" suburban kids listen to. Sure, we all love the riff from "The Beautiful People", but that's probably where it should stop.

I like a little - very little - of that early-2000s "NuMetal" stuff, but mostly in the sense that it's both excellent wrestling theme music AND good for working out to. Very little of it is actually "good" music, not even by metal standards. Like Drowning Pool and Powerman 5000 have their usefulness, but still... not "good", on the whole. Some songs are really good, but not a lot.

I haven't really been looking for anything "new" to follow in a long time, so I have no idea what's been coming out. The only radio I hear is at the gym, so I'm not up on any new music in general for the last several years. The most recent "newer" metal band I like is Fozzy, and they've been around for almost 20 goddamn years already. They are really, really good, though. Their cover of ABBA's "S.O.S." is to die for. No, really, I swear. See?


Anyway, I'unno. I'm kind of out of the loop, but when I do go to shows I still see people way younger than me, so that would imply that younger generations still get into metal. I do think fewer people are actively starting and playing in metal bands, because it's fairly well-confirmed that you really aren't going to get serious money and fame in the music industry anymore without doing the whole Justin Bieber thing, and frankly there's very little reason to get into the game anymore if you're not gonna "make it". Metal's always been a niche, far outside of pop culture, but it could definitely be argued that it's become moreso.

I mean, what would anyone expect, though? "American Idol" and those shows pretty much wired people to be more pop music-focused, even though pop music is terrible. For the last 20 years people have been force-fed mass quantities of that Britney Spears junk, and now everyone just assumes that's what music is supposed to sound like. It's tragic, but it is what it is.

[IMJ]

If you want to keep it alive, then we've got to get away from calling Marilyn Manson heavy metal!

Go back to the original stuff and move up the eras to see how it has evolved. Believe it or not, the heavy metal era began with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. But it moved into some really great directions with Sepultura, Pantera, and more recently Killswitch Engage. Starting about ten years ago, there was a big ladies in metal movement that I think sort of began with In This Moment, which is a great band that keeps pumping out amazing tracks.

Metal is alive, but like all music movements nowadays, unless it's blonde girl pop it's generally allocated to internet trends.

[Prowler]

Angry? Not all metal is like that. Bands like Saxon, Iron Maiden, Judas priest, etc. certainly don't make "angry music". Thrash metal isn't really angry either.

Death metal isn't really about anger either. Unless you mistake the growling for anger. But when you say "angry" music I assume you mean songs with lyrics about hating everything and everyone and being edgy. That doesn't fit traditional heavy metal, thrash, power or death.

Nu metal and core have ruined the perception of metal to many people, I fear.

And ofc metal has never been as mainstream as girly pop nor will it ever be.

I went to see Iron maiden in 2013 and saw plenty of teenagers and young adults like me at the venue. Grande Maiden are one of the biggest metal bands ever, so a lot of people including those who normally don't listen to metal attend their concerts, but it's not that rare for me to see people aged 25 and below wearing metal band t-shirts. Tbh I live in a large city, so maybe that's why I see a wider variety in subcultures than some of you do. Or maybe Americans just don't care much for metal? Now that I think about, most of the metalheads I run into online are European. And many who don't identify as metalheads listen to some bands as well.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by MsMarvelDuckie

My bad. I misremembered which country they are from. Probably because I mixed it up with Nanne, who IS from there. (She is so freaking awesome!)

Nanne Grönvall represented Sweden in 1996, as part of the group One More Time.

[FlawedCoil82]

I am not so much a "heavy metal" fan as I am a "hard rock" fan. 97% of all the bands I love started in the 90s (Silverchair, Bush, The Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots, etc.) and carry through many different genres today (hard rock, doom rock, nu-metal, gothic, symphonic, progressive, etc.). Most of my top favorite bands are bands that cross many sub-genres; bands such as Katatonia, Tool, Evergrey, Within Temptation, This Misery Garden, Poets Of The Fall, Autumn, Dead Letter Circus, The Birthday Massacre, My Epic, Source, Breaking Benjamin, Pallbearer, A Perfect Circle, Evanescence, The Foreshadowing, etc. Even my screen name is mash up of two of my favorite bands at the time (Flaw and Lacuna Coil). Really, when it comes to rock music, my only two rules are "must have good use of guitars" and "most consist of mostly clean singing (I hate growling or lots of screaming).

But overall, I find it frustrating how all forms of rock music have short "mainstream" lifespans, yet country, rap and pop music never seem to die. I do not know what causes it but I do think there are a few reasons for it. Based on many of my own personal experiences, I have learned that rock music fans first and foremost seem to have this toxic belief that "only bands who do a specific style first should be allowed to exist" and that all bands that come after with a similar sound are "copycat bands". They seem extremely unwilling to give new bands a chance once they find a few of their favorites; like they believe that the bands who take influence from the original band could NEVER improve upon or even surpass the band who did the original sound first. Yet, they eventually seem to tire of the select few bands that they allow themselves to like. However, rap, country and pop music fans do not have this problem. In fact, they are all too happy to keep getting the same exact slop forcefed to them over and over again and can never have "too much" of it.

Another frustrating element is the mass believed myth that "guitars are only for angry children". I can't even count all the times when people claim a band is "maturing" whenever they decide to lessen the prominence of heavy guitars in their music. I consider guitars to be a rather complex instrument and believe that it takes much more talent to write music on them than it does to program some electronic beats into a synth. I am 36 years old and yet I can still listen to (and enjoy) older bands like Metallica or Nirvana just as much today as I could when I was a teenager. Good music should NEVER have an "expiration date". In fact, I attribute the loss of guitars to be much more a symptom of "loss of talent/passion" than any form of "growth". Anyway, I could go on but I have rambled on long enough for the two or three people who will actually read all of this.