Sara Hammerzmith

A lot of metal music, far from all of it, but a lot of it, has pretty… what people would say, violent lyrics. Angry lyrics. Lyrics like “I wanna slit your throat and fuck the wound” and similar things, and the music if anything pumps up your adrenaline even more, and when looking at metal shows, and you see all these mosh-pits and what not, it’s not too hard to understand why people assume that metal music would make people violent.

And it’s discussed a lot. The impact metal music has on one persons violence, how many people have been assaulted as a result of people listening to metal music, especially after events like the one where a kid went to school dressed as a member of SlipKnot with a sword killing one person, or where some people had gone graverobbing and leaving behind a piece of lyrics, or Columbine High shootings where they blamed bands such as Marilyn Manson and Rammstein.

I came across a youtube interview with Clown and Joey Jordison where they talked about the matter, and it was actually not what either one of them said that caught my attention, but a comment that was either below or at another video, but it read…

“When are we gonna start talking about how many lives was saved by heavy metal?”

This. THIS. THIS A HUNDRED TIMES. This is something I’ve thought to myself so many times.

Because that is the point, especially with most of the lyrics. I remember I sat down and listened to “Disasterpieces” and the first thing that came to my mind was that this is a song that has to have been written about a bully, or something similar, and when looking up the facts, Corey Taylor stated indeed that it was written about a bully he had in school.

And this is how you get out the rage. If I’m pissed at someone, damn right I am putting out that song, cranking it up to ten and basically yelling out the lyrics ’til I’m out of air in my lugns, and afterwards, it feels a lot better. Because mentally, I’ve been acting it out. I’ve been acting out that I slit someone throat.

And thus, I don’t feel the need to do it in real life. Because I already acted it out in my music. That I killed that guy. That I set that girl I fucking hate on fire. That I set the whole fucking world on fire. That my supermonstars came and killed everyone. I did it, in the moment when I was in reality just closing my eyes and singing along to the lyrics of my favorite songs. And this is exactly why the lyrics are so violent. To act it out, without acting it out. Like writing a book, or making a movie.

So no. Metal music doesn’t make anyone more violent. If anything, metal music has saved so many lives, not only of it’s fans, but of all those people who would have been killed if we didn’t have our music to turn to. Another thing that it also do, is to help find our people, so to put it. To find other people with the same interest, and perhaps even the same background, and helps us bounding together. HammerFall sang in 1997, “A metal heart, is hard to tear apart“. And that is fucking true. I haven’t seen any people being closer and more true to each other than metal heads. With that being said, I of course realize that this isn’t metal exclusive, but I think you all get the point.

And to all of you who still are stuck at the people I spoke of in the beginning, I’ll just refer to the 2000 Alice Cooper song “Wicked Young Man”

“It’s not the games that I play, the movies I see or the music I dig, I’m just a wicked young man”

So yes. When are we going to start to talk about all the lives that were saved my heavy metal?

// Sara

This entry was posted on October 8, 2014 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Tankar och funderingar, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.