So tonight i was in a long line at this convenient store next to my apartment waiting to purchase some beer and chips, there was a 40+ year old black thug looking guy in front of me. He turned around to complain about the line and how long the cashiers took to get one customer out the door and he saw my Coldworker rotting paradise shirt. It was hilarious he was mesmerized by the image. "Oh wow thats a zombie mother Theresa!" "Oh damn thats a dead baby with its throat cut next to that dog!" (it is a sheep actually) "Thats an ak-47!" Then everybody else in line heard all his loud comments and wanted to see the shirt so i had like 6 people wanting me to turn around or hold out my shirt so they could see it better. He then went on to explain what an ak-47 was in great detail and what there capable of, like no one had ever heard of one before.

Great topic. I've read the first four pages so far.



Here are some of my own:

1)

When I was 14 my grandma asked about my Pantera t shirt. It said "I'm Broken".

I told her it was a song, and she said that was good because "broken" used to mean lost your virginity and she was afraid that I had. Annoying.

2)


When I was in my senior year of high school, some hiphop guys would give me shit for my Slayer t shirt, saying it wasn't halloween, and gave me the name "trick-or-treat". I was cool with the name itself, but annoyed at the ridicule.

3)


In freshman year of school, I had a Megadeth shirt that showed Vic holding a baby. The same guy who later named me trick-or-treat, started saying my shirt was evil and offensive, showing a skeleton holding a baby. He said I was lucky he didn't have a baby, or he would rip the t-shirt off of me. He was doing it in class in front of everyone.


4)

Another guy gave me shit for Metallica, saying they sing about killing babies. We got into an arguement about how rap lyrics are not any less "evil" than Metallica, and it was annoying. This was all in the mid 90s, and metal was not at all popular in my small rural town.

All sorts of people have asked me if I believe in God and if I worship "the devil". 

5)

When I was 14-15, a young man seen me. I was wearing a Morbid Angel shirt, black jeans and black sandals. and it went like this:

Hey you, like metal?

me - yes

Are you down with it?

me - uh... yea 

Well you're wearing the wrong shoes.

The guy looked like a fucking neo-nazi, and was a grown man. I was somewhat intimidated by him, so I just walked away.

6)

I was 15 when some friend of my parents came over and picked up my Cannibal Corpse CD from our computer desk. She flipped open the booklet and read a few lines from it, in front of my parents. 

"Butchery my meat hooks sharpened to penetrate
Emasculate, gouging crotches I will eat
Hung upside down, holes punctured through half chewed
Gristle, debauchery with dead bodies, turning green
Upheaveal of human entrails
Deterioration of grated genitals, dangling from the hooks
Obscene feelings deep inside me
Dislocating, separating a blood
Drenched body
Begin the anal grounting
Awaiting insertion, to rip out intestine
Bodily destruction
Vulgar molestation"


I was as embarrassed as all hell.


7)

In class a girl I didn't even know, who was sitting a couple rows back, shouted up to me. When I turned around she looked puzzled to the guy next to her, who liked death metal and who knew I had "Butchered at Birth". Then she asked me "Do you have...   Butchered at.... birth?" I quickly surmised that she heard of this through him, and was disbelieving that such an album exists, so I just grinned and said "Yes, and I also have Eaten Back to Life". Not awkward for me, only for her. 

8)

Not so awkward, but amusing. A guy in school always growled my name when I walked by. I forgot about it until right now. This was 15 years ago.

Great thread; very nostalgia-inducing.

I was born and raised in a small(ish; population ca. 20,000) town in northern middle Tennessee, about thirty minutes outside of Nashville. I loved it there for the sheer natural beauty of the place - in spring it's as green as Ireland - but being heavily into extreme metal from about the age of 12 in the middle of the Bible Belt in a semi-rural community certainly made for some at best exasperating, at worst embarassing, moments. Also, the fact that my family was fairly religious and conservative only compounded matters. Here's a few I remember off the top of my head:

1) I was fifteen, a freshman in high school, when I had gotten a package in the mail. My dad, who was proudly ex-navy and ruled the house with an iron fist, kept pretty close tabs on what I did because he viewed me as rebellious and having poor judgement. I made no bones about the fact that I was a metalhead, and he had always viewed the music with suspicion ever since I started bringing the early Metallica and Slayer albums into the house. So, knowing what was in the package I had ordered, I tried to sneak it through the den where he was watching TV and up to my room. Unfortunately, I was intercepted (and mortified), and he took the package from me, opened it, and saw this:



He gave me a look that was half disgust, half reprimanding you-should-know-better, and without saying a word, took the booklet out, opened it, and read this:

Mutilated entrails, rot as I disgorge
Ejaculate the mutilation, severed heads
Bleed on me as I eat the rotting corpse corpse corpse
Organ by a mangled body, as I regurgitate
I become infested...she lay gutted
Violent discharge, from the rectum
Carving pelvises from a woman
Ripping-vaginal skin, ripping-reproductive cords
Ripping-sodomize her
Mutilated entrails, rot as I disgorge
She lay gutted gutted, she lay gutted gutted

He promptly took She Lay Gutted away, said "son, these people are sick, and this isn't music," and hid it under his side of his bed. I went and found it a few days later and rejoiced.


2) A few months prior to that, I was sitting at the computer in the kitchen listening to a small stack of cds I'd just ordered from an independent distro. Dad walked in to see what the racket was about, and the song that was playing was the intro to "Kathaarian Life Code." He asked what I was listening to and I said, "Darkthrone." He listened for a minute, gave me a long, hard, bewildered stare, and said in his southern drawl through near-clenched teeth, "boy, it sounds...suh-tanic," like Hank Hill would have said it. He walked out shaking his head and fortunately let the matter rest.

3) This is probably the single most embarassing metal moment I've ever had. When I was 15-17, I worked at a humane society in the county where I was raised. When I worked all day on the weekends, I typically opened the place and would work by myself, so I'd bring my discman with a few cds and blast metal until it was time to open. Then I'd leave my discman and the cds on a shelf in the break room, and nobody ever really paid them any attention. However, one day this girl that I worked and went to school with, who was a year ahead of me and who I had a giant crush on, walked out into the lobby where I was mopping the floor and said, "who's is this?" What she held in her hand was this:



By the way, that's Intestinal Disgorge, Whore Splattered Walls - I went through a bad brutal death/grind phase as a teenager. Regardless, she asked whose it was, and because she knew in advance that I liked "bizarre" music, I thought, "Really?" I said it was mine, and she asked if she could talk to me alone in the break room. -_- Well, turns out she had looked over the booklet and song titles and even listened to the cd because it had been left in my discman, and for those of you who haven't heard it, a) you're not missing out on much and; b) there are samples women's tortured screams throughout every song. Seeming genuinely concerned, she asked, "how can you listen to this?" Bear in mind that she was a farm girl, heavily involved in the FFA (Future Farmers of America), and was really a pretty sweet girl. I explained that my interest was vested solely in the music itself, that I didn't necessarily condone the beating and torturing and raping of women, and then asked her how I could listen to the music for the lyrics - her assumption - when you can't understand what the guy is saying anyway. She paused for a minute and I braced myself for the deluge. Surprisingly, all she said was, "Oh. So you don't really care about what they're saying? You just like the music?" "Yep, just the music. They could be singing about flowers for all I care." "Well that makes sense." She smiled and walked out of the room and basically forgot about it, and was one of the few people I've ever known who saw my argument as completely rational and understandable. Having mentally prepared myself for a long, drawn-out argument about the merits of this stuff, I was floored and just stood there blinking.

Call me a pussy, but that last album cover I found to be utterly revolting, HaggardBastard. Actually, I hate to sound like a conservative fuck, but if I found out that my hypothetical child kept records like those in the house, I'd ban them. Well, to be honest, it would be both because of the images and the music, as I find pornogrind to be absolutely worthless from an artistical point of view. But hey, knowing me, it would go something like this; "So you like Torsofuck, uh? Well, get rid of that bullshit, because from now on you're listening to Onward to Golgotha 24/7 until you get that crap outta your system!"

Following the whole "people discovering offensive lyrics" thing...

I once had a big stack of papers full of assorted black metal lyrics laying around my apartment when I was learning black metal vocals about 2 years ago. Came home from work one day to find my then-girlfriend sitting on my bed looking irritated.

"Did you write this?" She asked.

I grabbed the sheet and it was lyrics from Darkthrone's "Quintessence." She had taken offense to the "Ten thousand women so alone in the night, oh I satisfied them all profusely..."

Went on a whole rant about how it objectified women and it took me a while to calm her down. That wasn't the end of things; she was constantly asking me whether I was secretly "screwed up in the head" because of my music tastes (to which my normal response was "well, I'd certainly imagine that would have came out by now given we've been dating for almost two years") and getting annoyed by other lyrics like "Bring the women and children before me; let us make rivers of their blood" from Primordial's "The Burning Season."

It was a good relationship and we've since broken up for entirely unrelated reasons (I wouldn't be trivial enough to end things based on music differences,) but hell if her constant taking offense wasn't annoying.

Oh man! Just remembered another great one. During my freshman year of high school I decided to be Black Metal for Halloween. Since I wasn't allowed to grow my hair long, I put on a black wig, my long sleeve Mayhem shirt, satanic amulets, black jeans, combat boots, and did my face up somewhere between Dead's and Abbath's corpsepaint. Even though lots of people thought I was Satanic/"weird"/"scary" because I was very open about the fact that I didn't believe in the Christian God and listened to "devil music," I was still well-enough-liked because I'm just a friendly dude, so when I walked into my morning class I received a standing ovation that, in retrospect, I interpret as having been out of both endearment and mockery. Throughout the day, however, I got so many "are you supposed to be Kiss?"s that by quittin' time I had given up on trying to explain to people and just gave them a grind and a "no, not quite." Just don't have the patience to explain shit to people, and ultimately don't care enough.

I'm curious as to whether this happens to any of y'all:

I find it incredibly awkward when another fellow metalhead and I are discussing music, and we pronounce a band name differently because it's ambiguous due to being either in a different language or a word that's not commonly used. This has happened to me so many times, and it never fails to make me cringe. Examples:

Drudkh (I've never heard this pronounced the same way twice)
Ensiferum (not a fan, but they frequently come up)
Behemoth (see above)
Burzum
Assück
Mütiilation
Beherit
Belketre (see Drudkh)
Tyr
Watain
Temnozor
Satyricon
Vlad Tepes
Tsjuder
Nehëmah
Marduk

A part of me wonders what it would sound like if some fans were discussing Asphyx in real life. A bystander might think that these young men were saying things like, "So yeah, the new Ass Fix is awesome."

I'm not proud of it: that Intestinal Disgorge album is pretty offensive from a musical standpoint. That was ten years ago: I was 16 and didn't know any better. That Disgorge album is pretty cool, though.

Good job demonstrating complete ignorance on what pornogrind looks and sounds like!

Whatever man; whether it's pornogrind, slam/brutal death or some shit like that, I just don't want photographs of gutted protitutes in the hands of my children, and much less when they're accompanied by horrible music. Can you blame me?

Fair enough. Do as you wish, but I don't want to turn this into the "Protecting my children from metal" thread.

Agree. This conversation ends here.

Few years back when I used the be in highschool I was the only person in the whole school listening to metal, wearing shirts etc and once I saw a guy with a Venom shirt, so I was like (even though I didn't really listen to Venom, but still) cool shirt...turned out he didn't even know it's a band.

More people in this thread were in a situation like that, it's weird.

Funny you should mention that. I played in a doomy deathish metal band not long ago with some decidedly un-metal people (they were good, longtime friends), and they once asked me what I was listening to. It was The Rack, and I told them "Asphyx," and they looked at me and laughed and said, "Ass Fix?" If you've never heard the word before, I can see how it might be funny, but I can't help but feel that more than anything it's telling of ignorance of vocabulary, never mind of death metal.

I do like to pronounce "Bal Sagoth" as "Ball Saggeth" because it always brings in the chuckles.

Speaking of mispronunciations, I was talking about Assuck to one of my friends and he didn't know them and then he says "Oh do you mean Ass Suck?". I hate it when people say it like that there are only 2 s' and there is an umlaut!

A friend and I used to jam at his mom's place back in high school, and his sisters would always come out and routinely make fun of his Candlemass shirt when he was wearing it. They would say: " Hey Candy ass, or Hey Candle Ass" ; and he would get flustered and rush them back inside the house.

Those bands (not Candlemass, but Asphyx, Assück etc.) really had it coming though, and may even have done it on purpose (I'm not really familiar with them). No need to get so worked up about it.

Any time someone reads the name of a band/song slowly with confusion in their voice

I have been known to unironically listen to glam so whenever that comes up.

Those were probably posted, but I find it awkward for myself when somebody knows I'm into metal, and asks me if I like Linkin Park/Rammstein/RATM/Mastodon/BFMV/Korn or pretty much any other shitty known band, or to go to their concert and I can't even be bothered to start explaining why I don't like them. I know it kind of sounds of "you're too stupid to understand real music" type elitism; but most of people I know are both very stupid and ignorant when it comes to music, even if I really like them...

I don't see why you're grouping Mastodon with the other bands you listed. Just because they're popular?

Pretty entertaining topic!

Back in high school (around 1994), I had a know-it-all English teacher see me in a Metallica t-shirt and ask me, "You know how long they've been around, right?" I say, "Yeah, since roughly '82. Why?". He shouts, "Try more like 1972!!!" I say, "No way, man! I should know." Then he tells me that he had a college roommate in the early 70s who used to listen to Metallica all the time. He goes on about how they're old farts and just barely got famous because of Enter Sandman. After a while I just quit arguing because I saw I was not going to convince him otherwise. I don't know if he had them confused with someone else or he just liked to blow things out of his ass like that.

Actually, I find it a lot of English teachers a very skilled in trolling

A few years ago, on the way into a Motorhead show, there was a homeless guy hanging around outside the venue, with a ticket. He was a black guy, had to be in his 50s, I figured he was looking to sell the ticket.

But no, he went in for the show and was headbanging harder than most of the crowd.

It's a skill acquired when we English majors write our first 5-page deconstruction paper.

We did something similar in my second year of highschool, which was actually what got me into it in the first place.

This is easily my favorite thread on the forum. Fucking hysterical. I'm glad I was raised as a metalhead so I didn't have to live through the constant family rejection. It seems much easier to grow up a metal fan these days.

A few days ago i was doing my History exam, with my Polish teacher (who speaks spanish very fluently) and when i completed the exam, i turn around to leave the classroom and my teacher saw my bag, with all kind of images of the Ramones.
-So, do you like them too? That deserves an extra point!- she said
I was totally surprised, and even though many told me she likes Rock and Metal, i never believed that.
I want to talk more with her.

And well, another teacher, but he doesn't impress me so much, because he's young and always view him with Gothic Rock/Metal t-shirts. But it's very interesting, nonetheless.

Seeing that this is in my top 5 favorite albums of all time, I greatly enjoy and approve of this story. She sounds awesome.

I remember a long ass time ago around the time "Gateways to Annihilation" came out. I bought the CD and my step uncle's wife started listening to it and was like horrified. It's funny, I was 14 at time and I was reaaally embarrassed. I was like "oh no she's listening to that!" Even a couple years later when I looked back I couldn't figure why I was so embarrassed. I didn't really say anything at the time but I should've been like "fuck yeah, it's Morbid Angel."

I remember in 8th grade, my english teacher made us all do a project where we take a songs lyrics and talk about it. we play 30 seconds of the song. I did Metallica - For Whom The Bell Tolls. I was sorta shy and not really confident when I did the speech. It was alright, but I didn't have zest like "This is metallica bitches, listen." It almost seemed like I didn't even like the band.

In 7th grade, this preppy bully made fun of me in the lunch line because I was the only one in the whole grade who dared to wear a metal shirt, or even a punk shirt. The only "punk" shirts people had were blink 182 and pennywise - big deal. But I had the Ride The Lightning shirt and had the balls to wear it.

^ those. I guess I was not pretty confident in those days. But I didn't care, especially when highschool came around I was a metalhead and proud of it. Wore shirts everyday.

BELOW IS CLASSIC METALCORE FAIL: (for the record I now like metalcore as well, but this the metalcore stereotype come to life)
Sophmore year in high school, this skater dude was like "You're listening to Megadeth? heh...those guys only sing about death huh...satan worshippers. Can't stand metal"
Then senior year (2003-2004) I see the same kid decked out in metalcore shit like As I lay Dying, This Day Forward, Poison the Well, Killswitch Engage, Atreyu, From Autumn To Ashes
He gives me the two finger "what up" sign when he sees me. I was wearing my At The Gates - With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness shirt. Guy thinks he's the shit for wearing Gothenburg rip off stuff.
I don't think he remembered what happened the year before.

I just love reading these. So many good memories.

In social class, we watch a clip of Iron Maiden - Run to The Hills (I live in canada, we sympathize with natives). At that same moment, I'm wearing an Iron Maiden shirt. The whole class turns around to look at me at the back of the room including the teacher. They all make me recite the lyrics in front of the class. Everyone thought I was a geeky loser.

Good times.

The English thing actually reminds me of when my English teacher was poking fun at Slayer and doing the typical rurr durr impression of harsh vocals so he puts on 'Ghosts of War' and I forgot where I was and started thrashing out, sorta


Seemed like a good idea at the time

I have tons of other shit, but those are stand out ones. I've had people listen to my music alot in high school just to hear the gnarliness of metal.

My advice is kids...if you have caring fathers. Listen to your fathers in high school. Have them teach you self confidence because shaming (Roman style) some metal-hater in the middle of everyone at school (rather than the contrary)can go along way in getting ultimate cred and respect (and maybe some pussy). If you get expelled, so what. You have the library and the internet to work on your real education.



hahaha

"Oh hey you like metal right? Listen to band XYZ. Their totally what you like...."

If I had a pound every time someone has done this to me I'd be posting this from a much better computer for a start. I just don't understand why people feel the need to do this? I don't go around telling them about pop bands they might like so why tell me what I'd like. Its not helpful and I find I don't even have the energy to reply anymore beyond "Not my type of metal sorry".

Thrashing out is always a good idea!

Yeah that used to grate on me. I remember my sister going "Ask your cousin if she wants to go with you, she likes all the music you like." I'm like "I don't listen to Bush, Foo Fighters, Matchbox 20, Ben Folds Five"...she thought "alternative rock" was the same as having a certain taste in metal.

I remember one time I couldn't find a CD, it was Disincarnate. my step mom was like "ask Angie's friend if he has a copy himself, he knows your music." This dude listens to Kittie, Otep and System of a Down. No fucking way (in 2003) that he listens to Disincarnate.

My uncle's into music, everytime I say I went to a show he'd be like "oh, who did you see?" I'd name these death/black metal bands that he of course has never heard of. He'd say " oh? I never heard of them" in a way as if I'm supposed to be seeing Paul McCartney, BB King, or Green Day.

Yeah, how DARE people with no interest in metal who care about you try to talk to you about your interests or relate to you in some way?

Pfft, you guys are ridiculous. I used to maybe care about the stuff in the last few posts when I was 16 or so?

Well surprise mate, all these niggas is like 16.

I'm surprised this thread has lived this long, but I'm bored and I've given it a read, so I guess I may as well mention the single awkward metal story I have, I've mentioned it on the board a few times as is. Firstly, I never really knew any metal when I was a teenager (Didn't really listen to any music before 15 or so), and as such don't have any "you don't get it" stories from my adolesence, likewise I rarely wear metal shirts away from home or at gigs, except for the more tasteful ones (Funebrarum logo, white Ignivomous, The Manical Vale etc are ok, Buried Death and Never Cross the Dead are not) so I don't have too many awkward shirt things.

Anyway, I had gone to see Mayhem, and wore my new Cemetery Urn shirt which had only just been put on sale and was very limited, and after the gig a couple of guys in Cemetery Urn guys come up and compliment me on the shirt, I compliment them on theirs, treating them like the usual shirt appreciation thing. They offer me a smoke, I decline, mainly because I'm whipped and my girlfriend hates me even having casual ones, and then they start asking weird questions, like how old I am (22 at the time I think), "That's a rare shirt, do you know how rare it is?" and stuff like that, then there's about 10 seconds of awkward silence where they finally say "We're in the band". So I had to explain that I'd never actually seen them live and it was all pretty embarrassing and awkward, especially since they clearly were viewing me as some poserish kid. Although I did end up drinking at the same bar as them that night and it wound up being pretty cool, just a really awkward beginning.