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this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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Went to a metal concert last year for a huge, well known band. The number of punisher/warrior, thin blue line, militia-styled ragged flag, Gadsden shirts and hats was off the charts.
In my younger days metal was anti-authoritarianism, anti-cop, anti-conformity… now these clowns are the ones who want to be holding the riot batons, the body armor, and support the very fascists we hated.
I got plenty of grey hair, the crowd around me didn’t so I’m thinking there’s a generational shift to metal going fascist.
Yeah, the meme rings pretty true.
Your comment reminds me of Metallica many years ago. Their first albums were really good I thought. Then they cut their hair, their music started to sound more mainstream and I heard from friends that the band kind apologized for the anti war lyrics on their earlier albums. I guess money talks in strange ways.
That’s the band.
Funny enough they still play those same anti-war songs off the early albums. Play what pays so they can ride around in their private jets.
Edit:
I did some digging. AJFA - One to most anyone objectively is about the horrors of war. The music video opens with the sounds and images of war. Lyrics say the war is done with the speaker in the story. It’s zero distance to understand that the person in the video suffered their wounds as a result of that war. The lyrics literally say a Landmine caused the wounds.
However, Hetfield walked back that imagery and the lyrics to mean:
So it’s not an apology, he’s retconning the song to this instead of what pretty much everyone legitimately understood it to be about.
Also, regarding Don’t Tread On Me, what people associated with the Gadsden Flag:
It sounds a lot to me like Hetfield is softballing pandering to right wing fans he doesn’t want to offend and/or personal beliefs that lean Right. He completely disregards the obvious anti-war sentiment in AJFA with “Oh, you all thought we were anti-war? We’re not pro-war, we’re pro-America.” If that isn’t some Chauvanistic Nationalism I don’t know what is.
Anyway, I don’t know one way or the other, but considering the crowd’s fashion choices at the event and his unwillingness to just say “war is bullshit”, which you can do apolitically, I figure Metallica, or at least Hetfield, support right wing ideologies.
E2: another interview where Hetfield says why he left the Bay Area:
So by inference and the preponderance of evidence, he’s probably right wing.
One is not about the horrors of war, Mr. Hetfield? The song you wrote with lyrics that include
I guess it was one of those civilian peacetime landmines?
Most mines become civilian peacetime landmines!
“The Landmine of Life” - Hetfield
/s
You know you're in a room full of true metal heads when everyone has distinctly point to when metallica started to suck, especially if they all point to different albums.
Metallica died after Cliff died, that dude was the heart of the band. If you read up on Burton you'll find musical crossover with Martin of the great Faith No More.
In addition to 'One', don't forget the great 'Disposable Heroes'. Totally sold out with the Black Album and thereafter.
I remember them getting haircuts and piercings and everyone being like "wtf?"
That and the Lars/Napster stuff really soured them for me.
I know I'm not a "true metalhead" because I never cared about the culture, I only cared about the music. As far as I can tell, metallica still makes banger music. I am not an authority on this subject.
There's still at least three good tracks on that album. It does mark a turning point.
Lot of metal recently using racist ideology, etc. Sucks that anything with a Celtic or Viking design has a racist vibe behind it now
Right? Of all people our veterinarian wears a Mjölnir necklace…I had to do a triple take to make sure he wasn’t a supremacist asshole, but no, he’s a legit Norwegian who likes Nordic style in general. He wears a Dragestil belt with silver inlay, some tattoos too. Cool guy. Sad that my first thought was wondering if he was a nazi supremacist because the symbols have been usurped and corrupted.
As an Icelander who still practices the old customs this drives me nuts. These scum lack the basic imagination to come up with their own logos so they steal our symbols? Fuck that.
I just wish one of the Kardashians or some influencer would go big on Nordic symbology and bring it to the mainstream. Maybe it would lose its appeal to these fucks.
That's the thing, isn't it? All these extremists steal other people's stuff and corrupt it to their own purposes. Nazis did it. Religions did it. Supremacists are doing it with Nordic cultural symbols.
Fucking posers, man...
And the silliest part is that Thor would fuck them up for this disrespect.
Yeah there are people who think (sterotypical) Vikings are their true "white" heritage and end up harassing anyone they don't like out of fanbases for viking-related bands. Heilung, for example, had to publicly state that those kind of people are not welcome after some of them were harrassing a woman for having the "wrong" skin color to be able to participate at one of their shows. These guys haven't yet figured out that their bigotry is the exact opposite beliefs of the vast majority of the pagan/viking/etc communities.
Is it bad that I find this reassuring? I love Heilung's music, but I've been too nervous to check out if they're Nazis. Now I don't have to worry.
Speaking of which, does anyone know anything about Brothers of Metal's political position (or lack of)? They barely seem to have an online presence at all, like a ghost of sick riffs and cheesy viking costumes.
I find that whenever I go to metal shows, most people are very kind, polite and free of bigotry. Maybe what you're describing is a US thing, or maybe it's just that Metallica is a super mainstream band which attracts more dickheads than your average metal show.
I know metalheads have a history of gatekeeping, and keeping these fascists away from the scene should be priority #1.
I can only offer what I experienced at the show I attended. Metallica was touring with Five Finger Death Punch, a very much right-wing "military rock" band that just sucks IMO. They straight up dog whistled the right wingers in the crowd using a lot of "there's something wrong in this country" type of commentary. Metallica bringing them on tour doesn't really change my growing opinion that Metallica supports right wing ideology. My understanding of the greater Metal crowd is that they are indeed good people, I went to an Industrial Metal concert a few weeks back and it was free of the iconography I saw at the Metallica show, and everyone was great. We had a good time. It was also the loudest show I think I've ever been to. Thank goodness for earplugs, lol.
Sorry, but I just read "Five Finger Death Punch" and automatically thought "Ahhh there you go..." lol
Let's not forget that time their singer tried to murder his wife.
I mean, Kirk Hammet literally wore swastika shirts back in the day. I used to be a huge Metallica fan boy when I was younger but eesh.
No shit…I never knew that.
Yeah I think it was either before Metallica, or early days. I've tried to find a picture, but they've done a good job of scrubbing it from the Internet. I know my source is "trust me bro" at this point lol, but I swear I've seen it multiple times years ago
I've never understood the popularity of FFDP. "War is the Answer" is their best album by a heavy margin and it's just... Fine? Like it's listenable, I can listen to it without being bored. At the end of the day it makes me wish I was listening to Avenged Sevenfold, Shinedown, or Killswitch Engage.
But the rest of their music is unbelievably boring. Their covers of other people's music is their best work, probably because they can't write interesting music.
It’s performative. That’s why.
Sounds about right for James Hetfield. When off stage the dude is one of those Mossy Oak weirdos.
The clothing/camo? I’ve only ever seen him in California motorcycle kit - all black, Maltese crosses, flat-brimmed ball cap, etc.
Heh. Yeah I thought Metallica were anti "the man" when I was a teen but the Napster case showed me that they were the man
They’re just rich old white dudes and everything that goes with it.
That's crazy, around here I saw a guy get his ass thrown out of a metal bar for having a burzum patch last month. They also forced a guy to either leave, invert his vest or remove a mayhem patch. The scene here is pretty intensely antifascist.
Considering the size of the crowd I don’t think anyone was throwing anyone out at the event I attended. I mentioned elsewhere that Five Finger Death Punch was part of the act, and they are absolutely right wing. Anyway, from the conversation here and the reading I did about Metallica/Hetfield, I’m forming the opinion that Metallica is different than the metal bands that everyone is talking about, partially because of their fame and visibility. They’re the rich old white men of Metal, and all the get off my lawn that goes with it.
Oh, I don't like metal and still considered them to be a mostly apolitical group of weird nerds. But it probably fits to the general trend of neonazis trying to infiltrate and overtake other subcultures. Oi! just doesn't draw large crowds I guess, probably Punk rock in general is not such a big thing anymore?
Some Punk went mainstream, but even then I think Punk still holds on to that anti-authority ideology better. Greenday's recent commentary on the Right Wing stirred things up a bit.
I was addressing that Neonazis usurped the Skinhead subculture for a long time. The skinhead subculture is part of the punkrock scene. Most of punkrock was always leftist though, at least here in Europe. I think you'll have to try hard to find a rightwing skinhead nowadays though. A switch towards Metal sounds like an almost natural thing for the neonazi scene. Metalfans should try their best to stop that or it might destroy the whole subculture.
Depends on what wave of skinheads you're talking about. Skinheads emerged in the UK in working class urban communities in the late sixties. They were influenced by the early sixties mod scene, the Jamaican rude boy scene, a strong identity towards their working class roots that alienated them against the government and the then middle class hippie lifestyle. As they were in working class areas in urban Britain, they were also rubbing shoulders with working class black people who brought with them their West Indian music and dress style. Ska Music and reggae were big influences on the tastes of first wave skinheads. In this way, it's ironic that the second wave of skinheads in the late seventies and beyond got involved with fascist politics, considering its working class multicultural roots.
I'm not sure you can say that skinheads were an offshoot of punk, at least not the first wave of skinheads, as skinheads predate punk by nearly a decade. As I mentioned above, the first skinheads were interested in ska, reggae and other music from West Indian roots. They were more an offshoot of the early sixties mods, with added interest in black working class styles and music.
The second wave came around when punk was in the ascendency in the late seventies, and that is where Oi music is based on. But Oi and the second wave's interest in fascism is certainly not what skinheads were originally about. The birth of Oi was convenient in a way for the likes of the fascist National Front in the UK, who were heavily recruiting amongst the skinheads in the late seventies, as it pulled skinheads away from that "problematic" (for the fascists) black music. I mean, there'd be a conflict of interest if you're heavily influenced by black music and styles and yet want to "send the foreigners back where they came from". In many ways Oi was a betrayal of the skinhead scene.
Not too long ago it came to public attention that there were a lot of Republicans listening to Rage Against The Machine. Which is hilarious.
They don't seem to consider what anything means as long as it sounds white enough and has an angry enough tone.
It's a bit muddy, it's been a few years since the whole skinhead/punk thing was more closely related. I do remember that there wasn't much visual difference between Punks and Skinheads unless you got the Punks were wearing their full getup with mohawks and basically had hair, whereas the skinheads really didn't, obviously because "skinhead". I always associated skinheads with being racists or nazi-types, but they also (at least in my experience here) were also anti-authority and often leaned hard into anarchy, too. So definitely some overlap with Punk.
I have no idea about the skinhead culture these days in the US, or what it aligns itself with. Can't imagine anyone affording a pair of Doc Martens, and plus they're low quality chinese made now.
I don't know if there's anything to be done at this point. There were 80,000-ish in attendance for the sold-out Metallica show. The people wearing right-wing stuff were everywhere, plus flying right wing thin blue line and Gadsden flags while tailgating in the venue parking lot.
AFAIK in France skinhead and Neonazi are basically synonymes, but I'm not big on this subculture thing, and this probably depends by country/language. But please don't go there calling yourself a skinhead lol
Yeah, as I said "Neonazis usurped the Skinhead subculture" in the 80s. There have always been apolitical and left wing skinheads, though. Nowadays the Skinhead subculture seems to be mostly dead (the whole punk scene has declined massively) and the few remaining appear to be almost completly apolitical and left wing.
It makes sense that those types would join the punk /metal scene. It's a scene made up of those on the fringes of society who are rebelling against authority (regardless of what that authority may be) and who are willing to accept anyone like them.
I've met plenty of LGBT, geeks, on the spectrum and otherwise different folk who are part of the punk and metal scenes.
Me too.
I was volunteering with an anarchist mutual aid group and one of the volunteers was wearing a punk war vest (idk if punks have their own term for it, I’m a metal head) with a variety of punk patches and queer buttons.
Maybe it’s just a symptom of only seeing shows in a city with a good radical scene, but most people I’ve met are completely normal and don’t have any concerning things like a punisher tattoo or a thin blue line shirt, etc.
They are since 40+ years, The skinhead subculture is part of the punk scene. And Neonazis usurped that subculture for a long time (not so much nowadays though).