Dead serious question.

At some point someone is going to ask you the name of your band or to see your album. Is no one in their lives questioning them on using pictures of murder scenes and lyrics about chopping up women? What happens at Thanksgiving dinner when the subject of your band comes up? How do they tell their significant others that they are in a band called Fetus Face Fuck and their latest EP is named Unborn Child Slasher with songs like "Menstrual Rape Machine"?

What do they do when they request time off work to play a show and their boss asks them about their band? There's no way all of these people are complete sociopaths. Are they all lying about their bands, or do they quit the band soon as someone they care about finds out the fucked up shit they are doing with their free time?

I just find it impossible to believe there are so many people in so many of these bands that are facing zero repercussions in their personal lives.

It's just one of a variety of things you may enjoy but don't discuss with your friends or family - fringe political views, interest in gory horror films, porn consumption habits, etc. Do you discuss all those things with your family too?

I imagine most of the people who play live in these types of bands work in blue-collar fields where nobody really cares what your reputation is. If you work in a warehouse, they're not monitoring your behavior like they would if you were a lawyer.

yes I would say quite same, a lot of people are out of "normal way of life" - and for modern times this also means not in the society of "how do you look" > "apparence" works here? where you need to control your posts on linkedin

Some of these bands are really extremely over the top, but at the end of the day it can't be that different from any filmmaker making a subversive or gory horror movie talking about that with their family. Probably "Yeah I play in a death metal band" is all they need to say. Family won't understand all kinds of art. This is definitely more extreme than a lot of it though - but easy enough to just not go into detail. I would be curious what immediate family members and friends think of those album covers and whatnot though.

I've played goregrind and nobody in my family or friends group blinked an eye. Is it really that much of a step from normal death metal to the eyes/ears of someone that isn't at all into the genre? It's not like my sister is listening to it and going through the lyrics...

Your stuff is pretty tame and not what I'm talking about here. But I guess it wouldn't be a Metal Archives thread if HighwayCorsair didn't point out that he's in a band!

I'd like to imagine they never bring it up to anyone in their personal lives. I certainly wouldn't!

I assume there's two groups of people in bands like this. There's those who are into it as an over the top joke, in the same way as people are into super-gory horror movies... there's a camp aspect to it that pushes boundaries. The other group are the actual shitheads who really do hold bad opinions of people and use the music as an outlet.

For those who fall into the former group, I'm sure it's probably just the same as any slightly transgressive hobby... it might provoke some awkward questions but my guess is it's obscure enough that most family and friends aren't going to be interested enough to care, they'll just decide it's not for them and move on. For those in the latter group, I'd guess that those are probably pretty shitty people and yeah, they likely aren't open about it.

I'm not really interested in finding out who in that scene is who, and nothing about it appeals to me thematically, so I just ignore it all.

“Yeah I play in a death metal band” sums it up fine enough for most people. Not everybody needs to know or more relatively doesn’t care to hear anything beyond that.

Pretty much that last post, and I’d even argue that death metal is overly specific, once you mention it’s some kind of heavy rock, it’ll be considered unlistenable noise anyway. At most you’ll get an “ah, cool”, and that’s it, no one who isn’t already a metalhead will care.