I've you're a big music fan, metal and other stuff two, then you've probably ended up dealing with shitty fans. Every band can have shitty fans. But some bands just seem to have a fanbase that is specifically shitty for a reason or another, something that a lot of the fans of the band seems to share. I'd like to know which ones you know of and why you think that this band's fanbase is bad.

I'll start with Genesis.

If you're familiar with the history of prog rock, you probably already know that Genesis was once a very acclaimed progressive rock band. But in 1976, some will say, or 1978 for others, the band "lost it's edge" and the most important elements of what made it such an important prog rock band left, leading to a big transformation in the genre. And from the release of Duke in 1980, the band as been more of a pop/artsy rock band under the lead of Phil Collins. The fanbase, especially the one that's very big on the prog rock days is totally annoying about this. They simply cannot let someone enjoy anything that's been released by the band after 1978. Some just flatout say that anything afterward was not Genesis. Which is an okay criticism. But I've met enough people with a bully attitude when it comes to post-1978 Genesis. I just so happen to be one of these people who enjoy both era. And since I was not born before the band made that massive sound change (like many of the kids who gave me shit for saying anything good about We Can't Dance), I can't really say that I was ever pissed off by that change in sound since it had already happened when I came to know the band.

But to stay on subject, there is this bully-like attitude of people who told me I didn't know shit about music, or who repeatedly called me a fagget for ever suggesting that Duke was not a total piece of garbage. Now to be fair, I'm more of a fan of the early days material, especially Selling England By The Pound, but I happen to be able to enjoy more pop-oriented rock if it is well done. But the "true" Genesis fanbase is very conservative and whiny about the Phil Collins era of the band.

Then there is Slayer

I don't have that much to say about them. The band is okay, IMO, but I don't love them. Their fanbase however... ouch! Loud drunks who seem to barely even know any other metal band but who still believe Slayer to be the heaviest, most brutal and revolutionary band in the world.

And of course, Slipknot.

Just what more is there to say... I've been to the 2015 edition of Heavy Montreal for the three days of the event. Slipknot were the main event of the last day. Needless to say that the crowd was totally different on the event's site on the third day. Slipknot fans have this dumb "I don't give a fuck, don't judge me" attitude, but are the most discriminative, sectarian, non-incluse group of people there is. They are short-sighted when it comes to music... they don't know much about anything metal or non-metal, they just know that they love Slipknot and that they are true and metal. They have a bad attitude in the pit and have this weird "I'm new here but I don't want it to show" vibe coming out of them.... Like they need to prove that they are tough, that they don't give a shit (again) and that metal is so rebellious and heavy. So... bad experience overall with this fanbase.

Metallica's fanbase can be quite annoying. But it's mostly the non-metalheads who are fans of them, since a lot of times it's the only metal band they'll give a listen to and then proceed on to bashing the rest of the genre.

Then there's nu metal bands' fanbases as a whole which suffer more or less from the same thing, I guess.

Can't think of anything else, but I bet I'll see many mentioning Pantera's fanbase ITT. Can't say I've ever met a big Pantera fan who was annoying, though. So I don't know where they get their bad reputation fron.

Pantera fans are somewhat similar to nu-metal fans, or what you just described about Metallica. They seem to have a very limited range of genres and bands they like, but their still comfortable with the idea of constantly saying that Dimebag was the best guitarist ever. They also have that "we so tough" attitude in their music... it tends to draw baldies with a shitty attitude towards them

Eh, I guess you might be right. I'm just talking from my personal experience. Most metalheads I've met are Pantera fans to some degree. I'll give it to you that many non-metalheads are into Pantera. Same for Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. Guys with a nasty attitude? Sadly, every band has some of those. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised that bands like Pantera and Slayer are more likely to attract them lol

Slayer-- Bunch of drunks who think Slayer is still brutal and angry after all these years.

Slipknot-- people who think Slipknot is true metal

Alot of the Deathcore bands' fanbases are the worst out there, namely saying that their band is the most heaviest, yet it sounds like shit. Plus their fans all look like a combination of hipsters and scene kids. They're really annoying.

You've ever seen the Ultimate Slayer Fan?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLfvDG3B79s

He's something. And a lot of Slayer fans are like this. And in a way, it's kind of a good thing. They found something in Slayer that makes them release frustrations and anger, and enjoy themselves with others who share their love for Slayer. But they're a little too over the top for my taste.

If you go on Google image and search for "Slayer scar" you'll see what I mean.

Probably Tool, Dream Theater and Opeth for snobs/pretentious fans. They elevate the bands work to a sort of transcendental art that only the chosen ones can understand. Its really annoying to talk about those bands with their fans.

I like Tool, but some of their fans can be quite annoying, and ironically even Maynard James Keenan probably thinks that too.

Then you have those Kanye West fans claiming him to be a musical genius... yeah I don't see it.

Yeah, but non-metalheads who like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest don't make an issue about it. You never see them playing like they're the toughest badass for liking those bands.

Ghost fans can be pretty annoying. "They're just poppy and fun, they're not supposed to be serious art (therefore you can't criticize them at all). Also, they're the only band now playing old school rock/metal!"

By far all crust and grindcore bands formed after 2005. In second are sXe hardcore fans who make gay-ass rules at their shows and are a chore to talk to because at any moment they could turn on you.

Mandatory ICP mention. I went to high school with a bunch of these clowns (heh) in the early 2000s as well as running into them in day to day life life occasionally (a few times wearing clown paint, before a show I assume?). It's almost like it's mandatory to be loud, obnoxious, trashy, and a pothead to be an ICP fan. They also have their own record label filled with a hundred offshoots and clones who also wear clown paint.

All the ICP fans I knew in hs were remedial kids, coincidentally - not all remedial kids are ICP fans, but all ICP fans are remedial kids. I'm sure this was not limited to my school only.

I'll second Slipknot. I've seen countless fans acting as if they make such deep and extreme music. Still a good band IMO, but most of their fans seem to be teenagers who haven't heard much outside of what they see in issues of Revolver.

Not a metal act, but most Death Grips fans seem to be focused on either being holier-than-thou pseudo-intellectuals or trying to be "ironic" and make the band a meme.

Strangely enough, I was friends in high school with two ICP fans who were inseparable. They were actually really nice, fun guys to hang around. They never tried to indoctrinate me that I recall; I was a die-hard Yngwie and Blind Guardian fan anyway so it would have been useless. We were in the same computer class, and they basically spent the entire time on MS Paint drawing ICP-related things; they were extremely talented at it, and even the teacher had to agree.

Definitely the Fates Warning fanbase. "Awaken the Guardian" isn't that good. The worst excesses occur in #metal. You know who you are!

Nothing is worse than Wintersun fans.

Personally, Slipknot were one of my gateways into "real metal", found this site about 5 years ago and eventually lost interest in them. I think I liked them more for just being heavier than what was on rock radio at the time. Most Slipknot fans I've talked to were just my age and discovering music, so I guess that's where I'm going with this. Music for br00tal Juggalo kids like deathcore and whatever the fuck else since the internet killed scenes that made you leave your comfort zone.

ICP is definitely the worst I've seen. Model citizens they are. Even worse than the fedora wearing hipsters who listen to free-form Jazz and crap on anything with structure. Also, I found that Dragonforce fans were as annoying as Dream Theater fans as far as "check out this solo, it's so technical and complex and I bet you can't play that" goes.

There's something kind of nasty about hating ICP fans. I grew up around plenty of juggaluggalo ninjas, and they were unanimously poor and dumb as fuck. Mostly good people and many were friends. No juggalo has grown up with a healthy home life. Hating ICP fans is a form of classist snobbery.

WHOOP WHOOP!

It is that good; you aren't.

Honestly, regardless of how bad certain fanbases can be, I've never seen one top the average prog-music fanboy, especially Tool and Dream Theater. I get the doubt that they even enjoy the music, they just listen to it to feel cultured, or a part of an intelligent few who understand the 'deeper meaning'.

That being said (I am biased from personal experience), Absurd fans are pretty weird. Both avid Absurd fans I knew ended up being put in psychiatric care.

Hardcore fanbases are hard to deal with no matter what the band is, but i found that the most terrible ones are the ones of bands who have both rabid fans and rabid haters: in those cases every opinion that isn't "OMG THE GODS" or "GRRR HATE THEM" becomes the first step for an avalanche of shit, especially online.

The most terrible cases are the already mentioned Dream Theather, Tool, Opeth.. and i add Radiohead and a lot of this modern tech stuff like Between The Buried and Me, Animals As Leaders.. really hard to discuss their music.

Then there are ones wich are devoted to the point of parody, but they don't really annoy me, as they usually disappear in few years: weird guys like Burzum worshipers, Manowar fans, 16 years old NSBM little-hitlers and a fantastic italian exclusive: Unblack metal devotees who worship stuff like Animae Capronii..

I actually never heard ICP in my life, they don't really have fans here.. thanks Atlantic ocean!

Yes! And usually the more popular an artist gets the more likely they are to develop a pocket of these hardcores. But then there's bands like the ICP, who we barely know of in Europe, but that somehow build their fanbase on a certain mood, feeling or belonging. They obviously become more homogeneous because of that so the percentage of weird people are probably higher for a band like that.

I tend to get the most annoyed with the Trve Black Metal crowd. Close minded in regards to what is ok to like or not based on really unimportant factors. Whether a band has satanic lyrics or not. Whether the music is "orthodox" or close enough to what black metal used to be. Whether the band is honest with their personal beliefs (Satan forbid some bands might have a gimmick!!!). They also seem to think that the second wave black metallers in Norway had a well thought out world view and/or religion on which they based their actions.



I dunno. I think its just me that you were annoyed with

That's a general attitude I've seen all over this forum, and in the reviews. And the "they're just poppy fun" thing actually applies to tons of other bands too - that's one of my biggest pet peeves in music criticism.

fight me irl m8 that album is beautiful.

But nah seriously Deafheaven fans sometimes get to me. I really like the band, but there's this weird group of Pitchfork types who seem to think they're going beyond metal even though for the most part they're just a pretty normal atmoblack band. They're the only metal band that 'indie' types are allowed to like, and that's 100% because of how sexy they are.

I like Opeth but fuck can their fans be annoying due to their appeal to non-metal fans. No, Damnation is not the pinnacle of progressive rock. Yes, there are other, better metal bands. Maybe this isn't so much the case anymore, 10 years ago it was rampant.

Prog fans in general are quite annoying in all genres. Just because you put 8 minute keyboard solos in 20 minute songs doesn't mean you're being creative.

I've had the pleasure of speaking to a fanatical Machine Head fan. At once completely brain-dead and yet fucking pretentious too, the guy held MH as the heaviest band ever and 'true metal', with that 'don't fuck with me attitude' that so many casual listeners of a token heavy band exhibit. A completely repulsive and condescending asshole who looked down on anyone that didn't like MH (especially Pantera fans, for some reason).

No idea if this represents the whole MH fanbase or if he is just a walking stereotype... but I bet that he isn't the only one.

Pantera fans are pretty awful. I always hated Pantera, even when I was first discovering metal, and I've had many encounters with their fans who act like they're some god-tier band who you have to like, and become enraged when anybody doesn't share that opinion. At the same time, a lot of it feels fake and forced to me. Kind of like those Slayer megafans...I know a lot of people who pretend to obsess over these bands for the image and so their friends will accept them, which is pretty pathetic. I've had people confront me over not liking Pantera, and try and get me to "explain myself"...as if it's some crime to not like that band.

What really cements this to me, is the whole Nuclear Hellfrost drama a couple years ago. It's hilarious that some Pantera fans are so insecure and childlike that to this day, they continue to flood Hellfrost's page with death threats even though the band doesn't seem to give a fuck anymore. I'll leave you all with a hilarious quote I saw from a self-proclaimed Pantera megafan who was trying to prove his metalness in the comment section: "My ex-wife was giving birth with my first child when I found out Dimebag was murdered, so I left her side and went and cried for my lost hero in the lobby \m/ HAIL PANTERA \m/".

Another fanbase I really hate is the Daniel Johnston fanbase. He makes "outsider music" but is basically connected more to the Indie community (it's really eccentric stuff but still within that vein of crap). His fanbase is really rabid and obsessed with him, worship him as some kind of god or whatever. Typical, but there's this underlying sense of "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, MAN!!!!" beneath it all. I tried to watch multiple interviews only to see the comments flooded with fans screaming "Fuck this interviewer, this interviewer doesn't understand the genius of Daniel Johnston!!!".



I just tried listening to them for the first time, after I read this post, and in the comment section is just a cesspool of what I call "millennial humor" , did not see a single comment about the music...it's just the most annoying insufferable "jokes"(?) from people who live on Tumblr and Instagram . I imagine that these are the kind of people who only listen to whatever their friends like and view shows as a "social gathering" or something.

That's a shame because I recently heard Death Grips' first album and I quite liked it, really interesting stuff.

In my opinion, the black metal fanbase is the worst. Mostly by what I see and know, they usually think that they're truly satanic, br00tal and tr00 by hating all that is different from the bathroom recorded raw stuff. I believe that is mostly by those people's attitude that black metal, in some situations, can't be really taken as a serious thing, having toothpaste-made corpse paint as their first issue to try to look "extremely tr00".

Also, Slipknot, Drowning Pool and most of the nu metal band's fanbase can be really annoying, by calling brutal death metal to the bands they like just because there are screamy-vocals featured in the respective songs. And that any kind of thing that does not have growls or screams is not metal. Splodges.

I would have to say that EDM fanbase is the worst. I had been listening to electronic music a lot since 2008. What I noticed is that EDM fans are all about the pyro/confetti and WOW factor and the music is somewhat in there to tag along. Most of the time the fans are either high or drunk, so of course the music dosnt really matter at that point.

I can respect teenage girls who like Justin Bieber/Taylor Swift because they know the lyrics and the songs inside out and they buy their merch and buying their posters and hang them on their walls. EDM fans dont have posters of Steve Aoki or W&W.

EDM blergh. At least the artists I've heard thus far haven't impressed me. I'm sick and tired of hearing Aviici, Clavin Harris and Alesso EVERYWHERE... and I don't even go clubbing.

I wish Retro Electro/Synthpop such as Miami Nights 1984, Perturbator, Mitch Murder, Maethelvin, etc. was more popular.

Ozzy Osbourne fans can be annoying as fuck. They always hark on and on about he's the greatest musician of all time. I knew this guy in high school who was a torture to talk to, because all he talked about was Ozzy.

I think I can safely say I've never been bothered by a band's fanbase. The idea even seems a little strange to me. Surely this kind of stuff is pretty easy to ignore? of course there's the Slipknot example above, but, well, it's Slipknot; what do you really expect? I'd have gone for some food during their set.

I tend not to get too up in arms about this or that particular fanbase, because I just figure people like what they like- I try not to judge people by their musical taste. But with that said, some bands, particularly some of those mentioned in this thread, do tend to attract a disproportionate share of meat-heads and white-trash "trailer park tweaker" type of fans, i.e. the types of people I typically don't have much to do with.

The only fanbase I've ever really found truly annoying is the Grateful Dead fanbase. And mind you, its not that I have any thing deeply against deadheads or hippies. I just find them annoying; to me, the Dead are the most over-rated band in the history of rock n'roll. While I can understand liking a certain band, I never got the whole deal of quitting your job to follow their tour around the country and living off of mommy's credit card and whoever you can mooch or freeload off of (or in many cases, steal from.) And the fact that these people sometimes listened to, and even talked about, nothing else BUT the Grateful Dead. It was literally like a whole cultish religion with these people. This whole hippie trip seems to have subsided after Jerry Garcia's death and you don't really see that anymore.

And USPM fans in general. The problem with that "heavy metal that wants to be taken seriously" is just that it's so hard to take it seriously - because it's heavy metal.

What Empyreal said about Ghost fans also applies to fans of post-relevance Darkthrone - "they don't give a fuck, they do what they want (therefore you can't criticise them.)" Nice for them.

Not a specific band, but folk/pagan/viking/etc metal fans are really unbearable in real life, because unlike fans of most other metal genres, who have the music as one of their main interests and a bunch of other main interests to have conversations about, every conversation with one of those people that isn't about the music is about something related like paganism, mythology, pagan history, nature, etc. Completely fucking limited life and at least 90% of them I've met were like that. NSBM fans are like an amplified version of that. None of them seem to have ANY interests that are not in line with being an NSBM fan.

Also, while you can get along perfectly fine with fans of classic radical far-left stuff like Crass, try talking to people into "diet far-left" stuff like Propaghandi, completely braindead. I think the modern grind/crust scenes Nolan_B mentioned probably evolved out of that mindset. Any second they could be off to a clandestine meeting headed by John Cleese.

I don't think USPM or early Fates Warning specifically was trying to be too serious. I just hear a bunch of dudes playing really cool, intricate, interesting riffs and leads. It never came off to me like it was trying to be "more" than metal's usual camp - in a way it embraces that pulpy, fantasy/sci fi mindset wholeheartedly and just runs with it. The lyrics being so brilliantly literary are just icing on the cake.

Black metal fans can be pretty bad. There are a lot of guys here who are very intelligent who like BM, but whenever I see threads like "BIG MORAL QUESTION: Is NSBM okay???" or "let's talk about how hipsters are ruining black metal" I want to ram my head through a wall. There's also this kind of underlying mindset like they think BM is somehow a higher art than other metal, which is fine I guess, but I don't agree.

Very common of the fanbases of popular prog rock/metal bands, yes.



That's because Iron Maiden and Judas Priest didn't write WALK!



Haha, I think this phenomenon is more specific to the United States. Where I'm from, nobody really knew of them or bought into the gimmick when I was in high school.

But yeah, pretty pathetic fanbase from what I know. They are Slipknot's Maggots on steroids.



Haha, I've discovered them through Anthony Fantano, pretty much sums it up



Or any fanboys who elevate their idols to the rank of gods of creativity. But I haven't really seen it. The fans give a lot of praise to Jari, but it isn't worst then Petrucci and Satriani fanboism. They never seem to put down other bands and genres, for instance. They limit themselves to liking Wintersun too much, IMO.

Pantera fans are the ones that I am particulary annoyed by. They act as if Pantera is the pinnacle of metal. They think that Pantera saved metal in the 90s, but the only thing they did was bringing their simple-minded music to the masses, while metal was actually thriving in the underground (black metal and death metal). Generally, Pantera fans are mainstream listeners of metal and they often don't even bother to look beyond the most common bands.