METALLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!

It is the cry of Jack Black as Kyle Gass rips a solo on his acoustic guitar. The duo has fashioned itself as the machine known as Tenacious D. The guitar wails as the drums explode with aural grenades. The beast groans into a microphone and the audience echoes back in response, fists in the air and a grand wave of long hair sweeps back and forth in rhythm. Black from head to toe, except for the shiny silver studs hanging from whichever body part the owner decided looked best, they bay for blood from the stage: musical blood. Gass slices his pick across the fret board, and the guitar bleeds forth sonic waves. The crowd bathes in the sweet, viscous invisible red sonic liquid and relishes in the thrill of battle. The singer cries for more violence. Violence, in the form of moshing: members of the congregation slamming themselves into one another like a double-sided piledriver. That is until the master of puppets has finished playing, and the marionettes rest, but only until they are reawakened by the call of the wild beast onstage and then return to their crazed trance.

The band packs up (well, the roadies pack up, the band goes back to the tour bus and sleeps), exchanges a some jokes and anecdotes about what they just did and takes its show to the next town, ready to sate another bloodthirsty crowd.

When the tour is over, the band members each return to their individual mansions filled with the works of Van Gogh, their self-designed interior, the sounds of Mozart and a nice glass of Chardonnay before kissing their wives hello, and goodnight (for it is late) and put their young children to bed. Instead of partying all night, the solo glass of wine is slowly drained before the musician decides to turn in at around 11 so he can rise and enjoy the comfort of an omelet with cheese the next day.

I imagine it must be difficult to be a metal musician. After all, it is a double life these people live.

In other forms of music, the musician fits into a genre of music befitting of his lifestyle. Alternative musicians can be artsy and intellectual. That is expected of them. Alternative music fans fancy themselves as artsy and intellectual. Whatever is cool for one is cool for all as the culture largely defines itself. Hip hop artists are simiiar, at least underground ones, since their goal is to break away from the mainstream. Again the culture defines itself. It is whatever the fan or musician wants it to be. Similar minded fans will follow the artist. If the artist changes course, fans will come and go based on the culture.

Popstars do the same. As their music is created for the masses, they define what the masses decide to do. As long as people are listening to your new tracks on “WPOP: We tell you what to love,” they will sit and beg at your door for more. When they get sick of you, they go and beg at other people’s doors. This is music for the McDonald’s crowd. Sure, it may not be the best, but everyone else seems to think it is, so I could go for some of that too. Mainstream hippity hoppers are basically the same. Mainstream hip hop basically is popular music anyway. It pervades American culture from the city to the country. Believe me, I used to live in Marion, and I heard just as much hip hop there as I do in Columbus.

Country musicians are simply that. Their music comes from the country. Their fans do too. The music comes from inside, so it’s all feeling. Jazz musicians are expected to be artsy too, dressing in black form-fitting outfits. They might be gay. Punk is all about rebellion. It’s simple music with one purpose in mind. Punk rockers like to take up politics. It’s a statement as much as it is music.

Metal is a different beast, however (see what I did there?). Like political campaigns, metal does not have a definite starting point. Its history runs alongside that of rock, sometimes crossing, sometimes far apart. Does it begin with Black Sabbath? They were probably the first band that would be considered “metal” as set apart from rock. But you could say it began with Led Zeppelin, which was around several years prior. After all, many of Zeppelin’s contributions to the music world took shape in the metal world. But metal has shifted and changed over the years. And if you look at those bands, they are a far cry from what is considered metal today.

The thing is, there are many different types of metal fans as there are many different types of metal. After all, one would not say that Iron Maiden is similar to Coheed and Cambria, or that Creed is similar to Mastodon, or that Dream Theater is similar to Slayer. Yet they all fall under the umbrella of metal.

Most genres are easily defined. Country is country. You could probably divide it into pop-country and just country-country, but it’s still country more or less. Alternative is kind of just a big blob of stuff. If you don’t know what to call something, you call it alternative or indie, but they’re pretty close to each other. Punk is simple (in many ways), and pop has basically become anything that fashions itself as music, but really isn’t.

Hip hop is the one genre that comes close to the splintered genre of metal. There’s underground hip hop, east coast, west coast, gangsta and probably lots of other different varieties, but I don’t follow it closely enough to know. But again, artists usually stick to what they do. Sometimes they sell out, but that usually just seems to mean they get better production for their recordings.

Metal, however, takes many different forms. Sometimes metal bands cross over into other forms, but remain metal. But metal fans know the difference between death metal and progressive metal, for instance. Fans might like several types of metal, but they know when something is no longer hardcore but instead is now rap metal (for the record, I don’t know that any band has ever attempted this specific type of metamorphosis, but I’d love to hear how horribly wrong it went if anybody ever tries it).

Metal does have a bit of a reputation. The bands come across as menacing, sometimes violent, perhaps Satanic, typically dressed in black and reeking of death in general.

In addition, I have come to learn that nearly all metal musicians must have one or more of the following characteristics: long, shaved or no hair, piercings, tattoos, beards. It’s rare to see anyone in any type of metal without one of these. Once in a while, you see a metal musician do his own crazy stylish thing and typically, everyone knows who he is.

But the weird thing is (and finally I get to the point of this whole thing), the way these people come across onstage, is rarely similar to the same person offstage. Punk rockers are still political. Alternative guys are still artsy. Country singers are asleep in a haystack somewhere after a long day drivin’ the John Deere. Popstars seem to rarely be out of the public eye.

I mean, when you show up onstage looking like death incarnate, you know the guy can’t be that same person all the time. It just wouldn’t lend itself well to making it’s way in the world. I mean, if you dwell on death, then why are you still bothering with being alive. It just doesn’t make sense.

Being a musician myself, and having attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, to write songs myself, I have learned that it takes a certain type of person to be a musician. It takes that creative, artistic person who logical people see and think, this person does not compute. I’ll make sure to stay away from him lest my circuitry comes undone.

But if you look at the stereotypical metal fan, you see one thing: kicking butt personified. These guys are big. They’ve probably spent more than a third of their lives in the gym, and another third beating you in Halo online. They have the beards, the piercings and tattoos. They are ready to kill whatever crosses their path in the wrong way. They are ready to beat whichever girl they prefer over the head with a club and then take her back to the cave to have their way with her. They are ready to purposely hit a deer with their truck and take a bite out of it without even dressing it. They are ready to guzzle beer after beer and wash it all down with a Jager bomb. Stay out of this guy’s way.

And the metal bands attempt to cater to this. The music speaks for itself. It is tough. Tough enough to wrestle with these tough guys and nearly get a pin. Tough as nails. Tough as rocks. Tough as a Ford F-150. It will chew you up and spit you out. Aurally, of course.

But the guys who make it aren’t the tough guys themselves. Because increasing muscle mass doesn’t count as creativity. The creative gene is in these metal men. Not the kill-it-dead gene. As a result, you see documentaries about these guys and think, “weird, that guy has a fine art collection in his house.”

But it’s not just the random metal dude who has that. They all are like that!

It takes a certain mind to create the complexity of metal. That mind has to think creatively and spatially, like an interior decorator or a landscaper. It has to create the sprawling audioscape. But then, it has to add the brutality. In order to cater to its barbaric fans, it must layer anger and hardness to extreme levels over music, that if you took away all the brutality, would likely make you stop and think.

This is why metal is awesome. It can encompass a wide range of emotions and feelings, from the shallowest, to the deep end. It takes up the entire swimming pool. Heck, the entire ocean! It reaches down your throat and tears your guts out, and then it arranges them nicely in a bouquet, so you can admire the beauty of what was once inside your own body.

But it takes a certain man to put this together. A man who is willing to bury his love of poetry and kumquats underneath piles of rotting corpses to create such a hellish paradise. The beast is unleashed onstage but is contained in the reserved metal man in all other areas of his life.

If the typical metal fan met his metallic hero, he would probably be quite disappointed. I can’t officially recommend it, but I personally enjoyed Metallica’s “Some Kind of Monster” film. Metallica, being what I call the McDonald’s of metal, gets stripped down to its basics as we see drummer Lars Ulrich sell off his large collection of paintings. Yes, one of the world’s most well-known metal drummers had his own fine art collection. He even teared up as he watched it being auctioned off piece by piece.

This is what it takes to be a man of metal. Like the Tin Man of the Wizard of Oz, he may be hard on the outside, and even claim to lack a heart. But deep down, he is quite soft, caring and accommodating. Thus is the dichotomy of metal man. Fear him. Love him.