"I hate that shirt with the ugly symbols on it"
-my mom on my Morbid Angel shirt


"EEEEEW!!!! THEY'RE GROSS HEAVY METAL STUFF!!!!!"
-my english teacher on metallica (black album era)

Back in high school, some kid I was vaguely on good terms with proudly stood up and announced - with gusto - "I'm way into Heavy metal, like Atreyu, Spineshank, Linkin Park and Nickelback!". To this day, me and one of my metalhead friends will joke with each other: "hey man, you wanna see Suffocation and Decrepit Birth in April" "Nah, fuck that dancepop bullshit, I want some real fucking metal, like Breaking Benjamin!"

Another time, my mom heard me playing some Defeated Sanity and freaked out - "Why do they just scream?!?! I guess it's just because they're stupid kids!" and I replied "The guy who wrote this is in his fifties..."

not quite original, but "This is Music?" - My stepdad on Mercyful fate

Also, "Can you understand him at all?" my friend on Alice Cooper. It seems like no s nowadays listen to even a shred of rock music. *sigh*

Unfortunately, nothing particularly interesting here, though the whole "Horrible Death-metal like Linkin Park/Slipknot" bit never fails to elicit a chuckle from me. I'm happy to report, however, that after 5+ years of hearing countless Power to Death-metal bands being blasted for hours on end, my sister has discovered that she (like myself) has a strong liking bands like Rhapsody of Fire, Haggard and Hollenthon.

I've got a fair few of these.

"You need to find someone with a nice singing voice." My mother says this every time I mention working on my death metal band.

"Opeth is screamo." This a favourite of several people at my high school. I'm not really an Opeth fan, but this is just retarded.

"Who is this? Sounds good!" This is what my father will say if he hears me listening to Black Sabbath. Every. Single. Time. He never learns to recognize the band as Sabbath, he seemingly forgets who it is each time. He sometimes says the same thing when I'm listening to Exodus, and once he said it when I was listening to Possessed but changed his mind when the vocals kicked in.

"Don't ever talk about that band when your cousins are here." My mother said this when I was talking about Rotting Christ. My cousins are very devoutly Christian. Which leads on to...

This one time I was on holiday with my family to go to a wedding and me, mum, dad and my aunty (the aforementioned Christian one) were sitting in the hotel room while I was blasting Psycroptic from the CD player I'd brought along. During a lul in conversation, the aunt said.

"This is interesting music. What band is it?"
"Psycroptic." I reply
"What sort of music is that."
"Technical death metal."
"It's shite." Chimes in my dad.
"And is that a person making those noises." Aunty asks.
"Yeah, his name's Matt Chalk."
"You should hear him doing it! It's monstrous." Dad nods in my direction.
"Don't judge." Says aunty. "It's just like when we were kids listening to rock music and dad would be saying 'It's all noise, you can't even understand the singer'."

I was thoroughly shocked that the one person in my family who could tolerate death growls would be my devoutly Christian aunt. She's in her 50s, no less.

One time I was at a formal dinner held by a motorcycle club my dad's a member of. After everyone had eaten and the situation had devolved into drunken revelry, I was sitting down at a table with my mother and a couple of the other middle-aged wives. I had my MP3 player on and one of the women asks me;

"What are you listening to?"
"Oh, it's a band called Amon Amarth."
"What sort of music is that?"
"Metal."
"Oh, sort of like Powderfinger?!"
"Uhhh, not exactly..."

I was out for a walk today, and a car full of guys pulled up beside me at a stoplight and they all screamed "METAL!!!" at me and gave the horns. I gave a shy set of horns back, then promptly lowered them and yelled "NO!" upon hearing the driver yell "LAMB OF GOD!".

Incidentally, I also know the guy who was in the passenger seat. He yelled "BURZUM!". The sentiment is nice, but he's a big fan of Trivium and Job For A Cowboy, so all I could do was smile somewhat approvingly.

Various other reactions:

Fat guy who saw the Cradle of Filth logo: "'Bible of Faith'?"

More to come should I remember them.

I let my teacher listen to Burzum last year and she loved it, until the vocals. She then tore the head phones out.

Ah, that reminds me of several years ago when I went to the mall with my Aunt and Uncle (both devoutly Catholic, my Aunt being a theologian), and I happened to pick up an Opeth cd. Well, on the return, they decided they were curious, and wanted to hear it. At first, they got a nice acoustic track, and were like, "You know, I actually kind of like this." Then the harsh vocals kicked in, and they were absolutely mortified. Seriously, it looked like someone just walked up to them and said "There is no god." Needless to say, they turned it off almost immediately, but I will never forget that look- pure gold.

chick at work asked me what i was listening to and i replied "Bloodbath", her face was like WTF????

"SLAYER METAL!!"

Emo kid at my school who talks like a Valley Girl and has a typical lesbian/scene girl haircut and wears girl pants. I'm assuming he has male genitalia.

'You really shouldn't be listening to this.' -- my mother on the more extreme varieties of metal or hardcore, concerned about what sort of implications may arise from me listening to this stuff.

Aside from her, I don't really get comments because I don't play music much around other people nor am I extremely vocal (in word, apperance, and action) in everyday life about what I listen to.

One that I remember, from a kid I work with, is him saying "All they do is fucking scream and they make millions of dollars".

It's hilarious what some people think is metal. The first 3 bands that kid mentioned are definitely bands that stupid people have mistaken for metal before, but how can someone possible think that Nickelback is metal? That seriously makes me worry for the future of humanity.

"It's all just angry music." - Girl in one of my classes
"I hate that screamo stuff." - Guy in another class. He calls anything with harsh vocals "screamo". The irony? He's a big Metallica fan.
"That was scary." - 10-year-old kid, after I (unintentionally) blasted him with about ten seconds of Ensiferum.
"How can you understand that stuff?" - One of my brother's friends to another. The band in question? All That Remains.

And of course...

"I don't listen to the lyrics." - A "metalhead" (who claims to hate Christian rock) in one of my classes two years ago after being informed that Underoath and As I Lay Dying are Christian bands.

Edit:

My guess is that they write some "heavy" songs that people mistake for metal. Like this. Still, the stupidity is astounding.

Oh, I had no idea they made songs like that, thought all their songs were like their radio hits. Yeah I could see stupid people mistaking that for metal.

This thread got me thinking, does anyone else notice that metal seems so much heavier and extreme when you play it around people who don't listen to it?

That really is a good point, I often listen to it in that circumstance and go "wow, this seems different..." I think it's because in a lot of cases we're wondering what our friends/whoever we're with will think and thus sort of "put ourselves" into their mindset. This is just a guess on my part, a sociologist could probably explain it better.

Yeah, when I presented my project, which contained Death's Crystal Mountain, I was just like... woah this riff just got a lot better for some reason.

I didn't get any bad reactions though, the songs in the video weren't that extreme. This girl, who enjoys a lot of Rihanna, Velvet Underground, and Nirvana, liked my presentation.



Here's the video if anyone's curious.
http://vimeo.com/3221150

DrommerOmDod, that is a good point. I bet most of us reacted the same way when we first heard extreme metal - I know I did. I thought Slipknot was as unpolished and aggressive as they came... until I heard Hypocrisy's "God Is A Lie" and was floored by the brutality.

I'm into more melodic death metal now like Dismember, Death, and Edge of Sanity than, say, Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, and the like, but it still is all the same to people who aren't familiar with the genre.

I myself have to remember to adjust to the general mindset on metal and not play Bolt Thrower's "Tank (MK I)" when my lady asks for a catchy, cuddly song.

"Are you going to become a serial killer." - My mom upon first hearing my new favorite band in high school, Linkin Park.


"Why all the anger? Wheres the love?" - A friend of mine who likes Weezer.

"How can a band called Slayer not be death metal?" - Another friend who loves Korn and NOFX.

"My head hurts." - Friend 2 upon hearing Chimaira.

""Thats a punk beat." - Friend 2 again upon hearing Exodus's Bonded By Blood.

"There was better music in the 80's." - Friend 2's sister also upon also hearing Exodus's Bonded By Blood.

"My favorite band is Godsmack." - A guy I used to work with after hearing me say I like metal. He walked away after I replied I like Slayer.


Mine arent that great.

It's funny you mention Slipknot in that case - the first really "extreme" thing I ever heard was "Purity" by them, and it was so heavy to me that I thought my speakers were going to explode!

I get the "noise" comments every time I play my music around dad and sometimes I get the "satanic" ones but that happens less now. My mom and dad are devout fundamentalist Christians.

I thought Venom was "extreme" back in the day... now my parents have just discovered that I listen to Venom and I've been doing it for two years, with no intentions of hiding it. I just started being open and carrying the albums around and stuff. As you can imagine, I got some odd looks from dad about the lyrics. He said on a drive of ours, "I just think this sounds... if I'm right... just Satanic." This was slightly before it was at the chorus, which I decided to turn into a singalong for laughs... "If God won't help me, then the Devil must!"

My 13 year old nephew didn't like more extreme metal back in the day, which was 2006-ish, but he's warmed up to it. He digs Bolt Thrower and the aforementioned Venom a lot. He'll also nudge me as a way of saying "Napalm Death". He's pretty awesome. If he flaunted it in public I might wonder whether he was really into it or not, but he tries to hide it while listening to it whenever he can away from his Nickelback-esque friends. He also wanted to be the drummer of my death metal band but was afraid of what his dad would think... he's not let his dad hear anything heavier than Metallica and Megadeth.

Speaking of 'deth... I never really got any negative comments on Megadeth, strangely. I expected to... but I didn't. The most I got was dad jokingly headbanging and singing along. When I was singing "I know if I wake her... I'll wake up..." and he said "dead" just at the right time. It was pretty awesome, really. He's cool in that sense... he'd never heard the song but knew it was coming.

My biological mother (I'm adopted) commented on Anthrax, "what are they saying?" despite going on and on about how much she enjoys "metal" from the "80s". (Read: Hair metal) She'll be 38 this year.

My hair cutter, and long-time family friend, talks about American Idol a lot and wanted to know what I thought about Daughtry and someone from the new season of American Idol at that time... since I listen to "harder stuff". I waited for a time when dad was out of sight and blasted some Napalm Death of the Fatalist variety.

Her: *smiling* "this is... bad... oh my this is awful... wow... this is wow."
Me: "good awful?"
Her: "no just awful awful, wow"

I sometimes wonder what other people are hearing as compared to what I'm hearing. I'm hearing beautifully layered and complex music (even in simple music such as the early grind band Siege) with a heavy edge... but it's not that heavy. Hell, I love Napalm Death's newer stuff and thought it was heavy as fuck but I never thought it was THAT heavy. I don't know, really, it just seems like everything is different now. I hear music. They hear noise. When I hear their music it's the other way around... I hear noise and they hear music. I don't get how it works, honestly.

In about 2006, when I was 16, my biological sisters (11, 12) had a friend over who was 13 and she stayed with us all night. About 10 PM I turned on some Amon Amarth (mainly for reactions) and she raised her head up and said "oh my god, what is that?"

Another one from 2006 that pisses me off till this very day... my cousins are CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVES LOL BRAINWASHED they believe in stuff like the illuminati, masons are evil, etc. So we had been listening to AC/DC and Kansas and one takes it up a notch and says something about liking Disturbed and plays 10,000 Fists. I didn't want to say what I liked because I knew the results would be less than spectacular... they kept pushing and eventually I named Slayer as my favorite band... they were just sort of in shock. "What kind of a band is that?" one asked and I just tried to keep quiet about it... but they kept telling me to name a song. So I finally got frustrated and said "Raining Blood". Emo jokes and "raining gumballs" followed thereafter. Needless to say, I hate my Ohio cousins and don't want to go back there ever again.

Oh god there's so much more...

Luckily, I like a lot of normal music too. I'm predominantly a metalhead and hardcore kid, but I enjoy stuff ranging from Bob Dylan to Green Day (!!!) to Amy Winehouse (!!!!!!) to N.W.A. to infinity and beyond...

I am looking forward to being more sociable in college, though. Just want to see what reactions I can get there. Hopefully some Slipknot fans and stuff. They're always funny!

I was walking past a group of teenagers at the mall some time ago in my Exodus shirt, and one of them exclaimed, "hey, uh...erm...er...Metallica!"

My dad occasionally says to me, "hey, this is the same album you played last time!" after switching albums and genres.

I think mine will be similar to everyone elses here... nevertheless;

"Nah i hate that gothic shit" - My 'friends' in high school when I was getting into metal.

"Oh yeah I love metal, just not that into death metal like Slipknot. You know the really heavy stuff..." - Some guy who supposedly likes metal.

"Black metal??? Is that like AC/DC?" - Some older guy friend of the family.

"Morbid Angel? Is that a band? Sounds like a slogan on a girl's shirt" - Girl at school.

"Metal is all like FUCK FUCK DIE KILL RAPE FUCK SLIT WRIST FUCK FUCK" - Some guy who listens to Coldplay and Radiohead.

"There's no talented people who play metal. They all just play really fast" - Some old rocker guy.

Yeah I can't think of any others. I can't remember any that my mum has said in the past. She seems to enjoy metal these days. She gets the band names right; "Oh is this Opeth again? I like this one".

Edit: Oh and when I meet new people and say I like metal they just look at me disappointingly and say "Oh...."

Well, it does!

Yeah I was afraid to wear my Altars of Madness shirt for weeks after she said that...

"Burzum isn't that bad, it's better then hardcore and such"
- My mother

"Is this person mentally stable?"
- My mother after hearing Trist screaming.

same shit

I also hate when people call hard rock everything that is extreme metal.


Another type of frequent situation:
Me: Do you like Metallica?/What bands do you like?
X: Oh, yeah, I do!/Metallica, among others
Me: Wow! And what are your favorite albums or songs?
X: Well, let's see...Nothing Else Matters, The Unforgiven, em... and X (X being some ballad from Load/Reload)


"I think that St. Anger is the most aggressive album in the world!!! Other bands invent their anger, Metallica's was coming from inside the band!!!"

Yeah I get this a lot too...

Or how about this;
Guy: "What are you listening to?"
Me: "X" (x being any metal band)
Guy: "Oh really I love 'X'"
Me: "What albums/songs?"
Guy: "Oh well... umm... I don't know the name" /OBVIOUS he hasn't heard any.

All this just reminded me of another one. See, I go to a guitar academy regularly for pointers on advanced technique. I basically taught myself metal riffing, but the teacher is a massive aid for improving technique and learning the stuff like sweeping and harmonics and so on.

Anywho, the school was planning on doing regular group lessons on weekends in addition to the standard stuff. Y'know, extra tidbits on specific styles. It all fizzled out after the first session. Anyway, one of these was a metal one, hosted by one of the other teachers there. I didn't think there'd be much he could teach me in one hour-long lesson that I didn't already know, but for the fun of it I decided to sit in on it.

Now, what did we get taught? How to palm-mute chug, because, as the teacher said, "all the heaviest bands like KoRn and Soulfly play like this."

I bit my tongue and stuck at it until later he asked everyone in the room if they'd heard of an Australian band called Psycroptic. I put my hand up and said "Yeah, it's great that an Aussie death metal band is getting recognition overseas."

He gives me this one-raised-eyebrow look like I'd just told him Psycroptic was a rare STD and said to me "They're not death metal, they're math metal."

Stunned, I just shrugged and let him continue the class. I don't recall much else happening until towards the end when he told us all to go buy the latest Meshuggah album because it's "the most heavy and murderous music" he'd ever heard.

Man that lesson was a goldmine of metal ignorance, and from a teacher no less.

ROFL. i dunno why but this was the first to really make me laugh out loud.

No, especially since in all likeliness it was a punk beat. Know your metal history.

----------------
Now playing: Death - Nothing Is Everything

After I finished work a coworker asked me "What are you listening to"
I reply "Bloodbath"
Coworker "Sounds like a band that cuts themselves"

My school friend claimed it was "RaRaRaRa music" when I showed him Akercocke Words that go unspoken and deeds that go undone.

I was talking to a metalhead at a party and we got on the subgect of Job For Cowboy where he said "This bands old stuff is grindcore" and also that Immortal, Dimmu Borgir and Gogoroth were all death metal bands

I've just thought of something that i find worse than people who are ignorant; Metal heads who know TOO much. I dunno if this occurs to anyone else but I seem to know a few metalheads that just continually vomit random facts about bands. Most of the time its just quoting wikipedia word for word... :S
eg; Every time I talk about Nile one of these people would say "Sanders hasn't even been to Egypt".
Mentioning Mayhem would bring up "Euronymous sent bits of Dead's skull bone to those who were worthy didn't he?"
etc,etc

I can't think of more at the moment (although there are plenty of examples)... but its these stupid comments that piss me off more than "SLIPKNOT ARE BROOOTAL".

That just makes no sense. Are you saying that it's possible to have too much metal knowledge?!

Joey Jordinson was like totally in Satyricon for a tour, and he was all kvlt and nekro, amirite?

----------------
Now playing: Dissection - Black Dragon

back in 1989 or 1990 when I was in the 7th grade we, the pupils, could bring Posters with us for our classroom.
I brought a "Can I play with Madness" poster which resulted in a PTA (is this what an evening where parents and teachers meet is called in other countries?) *lol*

Only my parents and two other (both being parents of my fellow metal buddies) voted to put it on the classroom walls. they knew us well enough that a violent poster doesn´t mean oneself being violent. All other parents were totally shocked.
Especially one father , a high ranking army officer, nearly exploded (according to my mom) and there wasn´t much holding him back from saying "they will burn in hell for that"
Because we had very nice class-teacher a compromise was made and we could hang up the not so violent poster of "Powerslave")

Some quotes from my past

"Oh *schock* Don´t you get nightmares by these poster?" (my grandma when looking at my room full of Maiden and Megadeth posters back then)

"Oh well, let her be - it´s only a short phase. She will listen to other stuff in a few months" (my parents taking my "evil" stuff easy in 1988 - well, they were wrong.. I´m still "in it", hahaaa!)

"Are you a Satanist now?" my younger brother when taking a look at my Venom "Welcome to Hell" cd cover.

Don't be silly, it's only that one chorus and it's a brilliant song anyway. The vocal harmonies and voice completely suit it. It's not like the rest of Crystal Logic is made up of 'Everybody Hurts' styled songs.

Anyway, here's something that sort of fits in:

Me and birdwotIfancy were chatting at a party, she said that she was a moderator on a Avril Lavinge fansite. I told how I review for a heavy metal website, we vowed never to tell another soul... ever.

Edit: last year, whenever my mum would walk into a room and I'd be playing music I made a point of putting on Mercyful Fate's 'A Corpse Without a Soul'. Somehow the opening lead guitar and cries of "SATTTTAAAANNNN" really went well her telling me off. She'd just walk around the room tutting, it was brilliant.

"It sounds like a baby crying" a friend of mine on Obituary O.o

That baby must have pretty huge balls.