This Video About Metal Elitists Requires A Response...

 

I feel attacked.

The guy in this vid used to be my one of favorite music YouTubers. In fact, I still love his Regretting the Past series. (He rips on Staind and Kid Rock so how could I not?) But he lost me a while back for being a hipster-ass millennial with a major hard-on for whatever band Maynard James Keenan's doing this week.

But the title of this video piqued my curiosity, so I checked it out and by the end of it, I felt like he was calling me an elitist. While he comes out in defense of a couple of bands I truly love, his criticism of why elitists hate these bands rubbed me the wrong way. Some of the shit he sights as nitpicks are actually valid reasons for not liking a band, regardless of what defenders of said band may think. On top of that, this kind of calling out coming from a guy like this is pretty goddamn ironic. That's some pot-meet-kettle type shit.

With that in mind, here's my two cents on the ten bands this guy mentions here insists metal elitists hate:

- Avenged Sevenfold: Dude says disliking M. Shadows' voice and complaining about it makes you an elitist? Seriously? That is fucking weak. I can't stand the dude's delivery and I also can't stand Synister Gates' guitar solos (leave the tasteless wanking to Vinnie Vincent, bruv.) Also, the stage names are moronic. Zacky Vengeance? GTFOH with that shit.

- DragonForce: I like this band. They're one of the few power metal bands that I like. They're cheesy and fun. I like cheesy and fun.

- Babymetal: Good God, do I love me some Babymetal. I don't care what anyone says. Stop whining about female pop vocals not belonging in metal. Metal isn't supposed to have any rules beyond electricity, energy and volume. Baby metal has all three of those things in spades.

- Bring Me the Horizon: I can understand how some fans may have felt betrayed by BMTH. I own a few of their albums and I definitely prefer their older, more metalcore stuff. But that's a personal preference and to whine at someone for having a personal preference is pretty lame.

- Sabaton: What's funny is that most metal bands have gimmicks of one type or another. Some metalheads just don't like Sabaton's particular gimmick, which I think is fine. I personally dig me some Sabaton and I especially love Joakim Broden's voice. Yeah, they have a gimmick, but no more of a gimmick than Iron Maiden has with Eddie or Megadeth has with Vic Rattlehead. And those bands are badass, too.

- Five Finger Death Punch: Ok, you got me. There is a total of one FFDP song that I like and I only like that song because Rob Halford from Judas Priest sings on it. These guys have talent and I think Ivan Moody has a really unique voice. What I cannot fucking stand about FFDP is their lyrics, which come off to me mostly as Moody weeping like a little bitch about how the whole world gossips about him and how misunderstood he is. Save the fucking emo weep-fest there, Nancy. And while you're at it, stop releasing horrible cover songs.

P.S.: FFDP's relative level of success is meaningless to me. Even if all the bands I love sold like FFDP does, I'd still hate their music.

- Ghost: I don't consider Ghost to be a metal band, though they do have some heavy songs and I'm not gonna fight you if you say they are metal. I fucking LOVE this band anyway. I love the imagery. I love their sense of the theatrical. I love the way they write melodies and how fucking catchy they get. And even if they didn't have any of this going for them, I'd probably love them for putting the spotlight on the Gibson RD guitar.

- Bullet for My Valentine: I don't hate this band. I don't love them either. I honestly don't know much about them and have never spent much time with them. Tears Don't Fall and Suffocating Under Words of Sorrow are bangers, though. And that Axewound band that Matt Tuck plays in wrecks pretty hard.

- Dimmu Borgir: To be honest, I haven't listened to Dimmu enough to have an opinion on them. (shrugs)

- Metallica: I have a complicated relationship with Metallica. I love a lot of their music. ...And Justice for All was my introduction to thrash metal and I own five or six of their records. At the same time, I feel like they're enormously overrated and it pisses me off that know-nothing music journalists have crowned them as the greatest metal band of all time instead of someone more deserving, like Black Sabbath (without whom, 'Tallica wouldn't even exist.) As far as them changing styles, I kinda feel like it's pretty cheap to hold the fact that someone doesn't like that a band changed their style against them. The fact that I think Ride the Lightning or The Black Album is better than Load or Death Magnetic doesn't mean I'm elitist, even if I complain about how much they've changed. 

In conclusion: This guy makes some decent points about the nit-picky shit people use to dismiss bands. But considering someone elitist just cuz they prefer one phase of a band's sound over another sounds pretty damn elitist to me. And after hearing this guy dismiss bands I love for what I consider to be stupid reasons while he can't shut up about hip rock and metal bands that all the cool kids love seems pretty fucking hypocritical to me. But what do I know? According to this quack's criteria, I'm probably an elitist.