Hello there again dear friends, today to continue my Halloween season topics, i want to talk about something that i'm very passionate about: Heavy Metal! and the metal and extreme music genres in general, i see the steemit community has a deep appreciation and large demand for genres such as reggae and ballads, which it's awesome those styles are without a doubt beautiful and inspiring, but seems like the overall heavy music is non existing and makes me wonder: ¿is it because it's evil or angry?, ¿is it really evil, or just misunderstood?. Since very young i have loved to hear this dark, moody, full of angst and sometimes very complex styles, there is something in the crunchy and thunderous sound of the distorted guitars, the raw vocals and shadowy atmospheres that make me feel really alive, although i suppose all of these characteristics i just mentioned are the reason metal and all other forms of metal aren't at the top of popular music, especially in Venezuela where; yeah, metal do have many followers and fans but at the end of the day most people can't stand it and consider it: demoniacal, noisy and just aren't interested in listening to it, ¿is it the same at the steemit community?
So first, let me clarify what "metal music" is and how, when and where it begin; in the late 60's and early 70's three rock groups were founded in the United Kingdom that are considered the pioneers of the genre (Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin), these bands are characterized for using highly amplified distorted guitars, heavy drums and bass rhythms, guitar solos and overall loudness, they became very popular all around the world and inspired a whole generation of musicians that came after them. To me the one that carries the most credit and responsibility is definitely Sabbath, even the "heavy metal"; Legend has it that this band guitar player (Tony Iommi) lost one of his fingers while working at a metallurgical factory, aside the fact that most of the lyrics and sounds of the band are very grim and obscure, many of their songs talk about the devil, witches, occult magic stuff and lead singer Ozzy Osbourne is also known as "The Prince of Darkness" (no wonder why people consider this music to be diabolical). In the coming decades the genre expanded into many other sub-genres like: glam metal, death metal, trash metal, black metal, etc, with thousands of bands all over the world performing and recording music, taking it step by step further, regarding the complexity of musical compositions and the quality of sounds, now days there are probably more than one-hundred (100) of this sub-genres and fusion-genres.
Okay very good, so far we can agree that metal music is: ¿Angry? Yup, just by listening to it and reading lyrics you'll see it's obviously full of angst. ¿Demoniacal? Sure thing, many bands not only Sabbath speak about the devil in their lyrics and many others; Specially bands in the Norwegian black-metal scene worshiped Lucifer, consider themselves satanist, spoke against the Christians, had misanthropic points of views and even burned churches. ¿Evil? this third point is still open to debate and i'll put things into a balance right now, but first let's quickly review ¿what does Evil really means?. According to the concept of evil in Wikipedia: it is the contrary or the absence of good and it's a broad concept because of the fact that it can take many forms as for example: when a person physically harms another one which is considered moral evil or an earthquake or cancer which would be natural evil. Here's the link to the full article in case anyone wants to dig deeper into it. EVIL!
Well then, defining this concept isn't exactly easy but if we use the knowledge we already have to finally answer the question at hand, i say NO, ¿why? well, the music itself although it's loud, intense with lyrics that include demons and creatures that could be considered evil hasn't ever really killed, harmed or made anyone ill. Yeah i know some of the black metal musicians from the early nineties were psychopaths, for example the founder of solo project Burzum named Varg Vikerns; Who killed Mayhem guitarist and co-founder Euronymous over a financial feud, Vikerns was found guilty and arrested for twenty-one (21) years in ninety ninety three (1993) this and also for arson and possession of explosives, another similar case is the one of Faust, drummer of the band Emperor who killed a homosexual man named Magne Andreassen after he agreed to take a walk with him around a park, he was also sentenced and imprisoned for fourteen (14) years. There was also rivalry between the Norwegian black metal scene and the Swedish death metal scene, in which the recently mentioned guitarist Euronymous sent many death threads to some of the most popular musicians from this Swedish bands. (Okay i have to admit black metal it's kind of evil, more darkness and evil metal stories here). But still i keep my position by saying that even the songs that the musicians i just mentioned wrote and recorded didn't do anything evil it's just very dark, intense and angry music and in my opinion the energy and intention that it transmits has the effect of draining all of this negative feelings out of you when you listen to it, in any way this would make metal music good ¿right? anything that helps anyone to cope with anger or desperation i'ts definitely a relief and should be appreciated. Anyway that's just my opinion, i would like to know someone else's about this topic, is really metal excluded from the steemit community or is it just my idea? do you disagree with me and think metal is evil? is it evil because it's angry and demoniacal? let me know your thoughts friends!
At the beginning of the post i said that metal isn't very popular at my country but still has some followers, consider the fact that Metallica came two times in different years and sold out both shows, also to prove that the genre is't totally dead here, listen the rocking face melting riff my friend Jorge Garcia was playing in this short video recorded a few weeks ago at his room, i admire him so very much and consider he's one of the best metal guitar players (or guitar player whatsoever) i have ever heard and known.
Again, thanks to the @steempeak this interface makes everything sooooo easy! cheers! and best regards to everyone, with love, Luis Puente.
To the question in your title, my Magic 8-Ball says:
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Absolutely no