DAVE PETERS’ CALL FOR PEACE AMONGST METALHEADS
In what I’m sure is an effort to promote the band’s latest album Venom & Tears, Throwdown frontman Dave Peters has written a guest column for Headbanger’s Blog. But rather than just write something silly and forgettable like some of his peers have done with their guest columns on the same site (cough, Wayne Static, cough, cough), Peters has actually taken a stand on all the “real metal vs. not-real metal” bullshit that so plagues the music we love.
More after the jump.In what might end up being a kind of controversial statement, Peters writes:
“I might be way off base, but I think musical genres were created just to make it a little easier for people to describe a band or artist to someone else – simple tools for reference/comparison purposes. But when the hell did they become these forbidding lines in the sand that people dare not cross? Especially when the genres/sub-genres in question are only slightly different versions of one another to the point that the untrained ear couldn’t tell the difference anyway.
“I don’t expect Iron Maiden fans to get down with Jay-Z. I don’t expect George Strait fans to get into Cannibal Corpse. And I know it’s often a stretch for fans of aforementioned artists to even understand one another’s styles (let alone their fans). But how the fuck can someone tell me, for example, they love Hatebreed but hate Slayer? Sure the lyrical content and haircuts are different, but we’re not talking Whitney Houston and Skrewdriver for fuck’s sake. They’re both great bands that are great for some of the same reasons.”
He continues:
“If you listen to Motörhead, you have to grow a handlebar mustache and tie a flannel around your waist. If you listen to Terror, you wear mesh shorts and a flat brim hat tilted to the side. If you listen to Children Of Bodom, you need long black hair and you play the card game Magic: The Gathering. Jesus H. Christ. I mean, I know there aren’t people out there saying this to other people that are finding these bands for the first time, but there are these general and absurd stereotypes for sub-genres that aren’t that fuckin’ different – at least, not different enough to fuss over trivial bullshit.”
We’re big fans of all sorts of metal here at MetalSucks (that’s why we spend as much time writing about GN’R as we do Slayer), so we’d like to go on record as pointing out that Peter is clearly sticking his neck out here – you can just feel a thousand rabid Meshuggah fans getting ready to pounce on the poor guy – but that what he’s saying is ostensibly true. He’s not just lumping all metal together regardless of how they sound, the way that, say, the marketing gurus at Victory Records do – he’s just pointing out that there are sonic relationships between all forms of metal, that the divide between genre A and genre B isn’t that great, and that, ultimately, arguing if a band “is” or “is not” metal is a huge waste of time – all we should care about is if it’s good or bad metal.
-AR
P.S. Nu metal still sucks.
