MURAI said:
and they will never get most of us in metal will never go too exteme other those in black metal.
For the media one rotten apple is enough to spoil the whole barrel.
I know several black metal fans in forums that are nice, common, intelligent people. They like the music, they are not jumping around in corpsepaint and silly outfits. Some of them are heavy anti-Christian (to the venomous point sadly) but they are not homicidal.
Drugs are nothing but trouble, and people into drugs usually take the best of something to turn it into shit. I'm sure that are killers out there who were into drugs and Mad-onna, JJ Scoopy Dog, Brit-nay Spits, and stuff like that. But the media will never make any connection because is biased against metal already.
How many serial killers history have that claimed God voice send them to due the dirty deed? And the press dismissed them at poor misguided souls. One guy comes claiming Satan order him to kill and I bet my underwear the press will dig into his past, family, friends, dog, cat to find a single Led Zeppelin album and claim that has backward messages and that metal is evil
per se.
I do believe the BM sub-genre is contaminated with a lot of negative messages and bad guide from idiots in bands,
ergo idiotic kids (without supportive talkative parents) and drug users got carried away. But there is also a lot of stuff that musically can be called by today standards black metal and they are not preaching violence and murder for free.
A story from my own experience: Many years ago I had a friend deep into the underground metal movement in the country (he also played later drums in a death band). The country had a growing pop/rock movement with good media support and an extreme metal underground movement looking for fans a a chance to shine, ignored absolutely by anyone outside the movement (including metal fans).
Several mini-festivals were hold, and I even videotaped two of them for my friend. Never had a problem with anyone, and everybody from the bands were nice people who like to play heavy, fast and raw.
For one of the festivals my friend asked me for my camera tripod to taped it, because I was unable to attend (I was already teaching at the university and was already bored with death). The festival was hold in an EMPTY wherehouse rented from a guy for the purpose of the concert. The attendants were of COURSE moshing, slamming and jumping like monkeys around. The place was closed except for attendants, bands and people related to the movement. For reasons never disclosed or forgotten by me, the guy who rented the EMPTY wherehouse call the police claiming the people was DESTROYING the place
(a concrete, windowless structure). The police arrived and saw a bunch of kids with long hair, black t-shirts with demons and blood, screaming and jumping. Of course IMMEDIATELY without asking for EXPLANATIONS they begun to stop the thing and arrest everybody. The Minister of Police looking for an easy POLITICAL jump, decided to show up and arrest EVERYBODY, not only that. He send all these kids to jail, and proceed to RAID music stores confiscating CDs like there's no tomorrow (no I'm not lying). The media IMMEDIATELY show up to make quick news, some cheap newspapers make a lot of crap, but most of the big media begun to notice that:
a) there was a tape of the concert showing no damaging behavior, plus one guy was atop of the structure filming the police storming the place (it didn't look good in the end)
b) among the several CDs confiscated by the genius of the Minister was: Eagles, Queen, AC/DC, etc (the guy obviously cannot differenciate classic rock from death metal).
Anyway the media started to mock the affair. Better yet a growing TV program (a la Oprah, Donahue, let's say) call the Catholic archbishop (the country is mainly Catholic), a protestant pastor, two of the kids arrested, a wacko claiming the music was satanic, and a psychoanalist. Among the public in the studio were the top rock musicians of the country showing solidarity. After the night was over, the archbishop won the hearts of the movement supporting the kids with intelligence, the Christians mainly screwed up quoting the bible, the wacko was dismissed by the psychoanalist and the public as an idiot, and the guys who had represented the country in international rock festivals and had albums, radio support and a clean name stand up and support the kids, the music and dimissed any satanic influence in the music.
Some years afterwards the Minister fall is disgrace politically, the metal movement growth a lot, my friend was playing in a death band heading for US, adn the same newspapers who dennounce the kids were praising the band for their efforts. The live album (which I videotaped) was engineered by the top pop/rock musician of that time (who later went to study in US and work in Hollywood), and the band considered a big promise in the area (never made it for reasons outside this rant).
Since last year Kreator, Helloween, Marduk, Gamma Ray, Masterplan, Rata Blanca, Angeles Del Infierno had played here. Therion plays next month I believe, and Nightwish, Saxon are planned for the future. How this change was made? Information. The kids who
survived the raid, musicians, fans took an effort talking, educating people. A lot of prejudice still exist (hey, this ain't fucking paradise) but good marketing, media manipulation and intelligence change attitudes.
The botomline again is INFORMATION. The more we inform to our relatives, friends, neighbors about the true nature of metal the more we can help to counterattack crap from the media.
Sorry again for another long post (still Friday 13th effect
).
