Sep 16, 2009

"Headbanger's Journey" not my journey


I was so excited when The Lady of Loudness loaned me her copy of "A Headbanger's Journey" last week. I had visions of watching the film and saying, "Yes! That is what I'm talking about! I can relate to this so much." I had an evil plan that I would loan the movie to my mom. After seeing it she would better understand what her kid was going through in high-school years ago. She would apologize for making my music such a big deal. She would feel awful about thinking I was signing up to join Satan's army.

Boy, was I shocked when I saw this film! This movie depicts everything that is negative about metal culture. After seeing this I am embarrassed to call myself a "metal head". The problem is that too many genres fall under the category of "heavy metal". To me metal is the stuff I love, ie hard rock, power metal and progressive metal, even a bit of glam is fine. But to lump death, dark, and black metal into the same category is plain wrong. This really bugs me. I hate going into a music store, hitting up the Heavy Metal section and seeing all the death stuff in it's weird un-readable fonts right next to my Judas Priest. Or even worse... the Priest stuff is now in the "Rock" section. What the heck?? My genre has been hi-jacked by this ridiculous zero-talent noise.

The hardest stuff I ever got into was Megadeth and Anthrax, so I never cared for the death/growling stuff. After seeing this film I am reminded why. If I was a parent and my kid was into that stuff I would be scared too. Wow... now this is a strange turn of events. After all this time I am now seeing things from my mom's point of view. Maybe she wasn't so wrong after all. If I had gotten into the harder stuff who knows? Maybe I would be living in Norway burning down churches and listening to really crappy music.

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