Why Metal Is Associated To Scary Stuff

Is It True That Metal Is Associated To Scary Stuff?

Hi, GryphinGore Dweller!

A friend of mine once asked, "why is metal music often associated with darkness and scary things This is my opinion...

In The Early Age of Metal

Maybe Ozzy Osbourne did not get the title of The Prince of Darkness if there were social media when Ozzy Osbourne bit the neck of the bat on the stage.

Maybe he would immediately tweet, "damn, I thought it was a toy!"

And people won't be too excited about that. The phenomenon made by Ozzy's band, Black Sabbath did not stop there.

The fingertips of the guitarist, Tony Iommi, were cut off at his place of work. This caused him to use a prosthetic finger so he could keep playing the guitar. As the result, the sound of the guitar he produced became a new trend. And the limitations of his fingers helped popularize power chords, the chords that can be played with just two fingers.

Well, the two events just had been scary at that time. A vocalist bites the bat's head off, and the finger is cut off at work.

Gore, isn't it?

But, Imagine What Will Happen If Any of Those Events Occurred Today?

Ozzy will be protested by animal lovers, or maybe even sued by the random organizations on Facebook. And the guitarist will be replaced by electronic instruments and sampling.

The term metal itself was formed because literally in the place of music it originated from many metal factories. And, imagine how noisy the situation was.

No kidding... check your history book! Not into reading? Check the video below!

The British Invasion

British invasion, the era when British bands (one of them is Iron Maiden) dominated the market in America.  Iron Maiden came with its personification symbol which is even as famous as the rest of the band member, called Eddie.

This was then anticipated by American music producers by producing bands that could play louder, faster, and of course scarier, one of them was Slayer.

In Conclusion, The Cause and Effect 

That time, there were demands then came the providers. But this excitement slowly moved away from loud music towards another genre.

Such as Twisted Sister, a hair metal band, whose song is not as hard as Slayer and Anthrax, Twisted Sister also uses "creepy" packaging. All bands were tried to be sold in a scary image, if not shown visually, they at least use scary names.

You might be surprised to hear Slaughter songs, which turned out to be not even close to what we called Metal at all.

Then, the trend changed when Van Halen hit Los Angeles with their friendly and smiley performance.  This made the unpopular genre, called teeth metal. Because they show teeth, smile... teeth. Duh!

The music producers then made a new anchor, not darker and scarier anymore. But more skillfully, and more persona. Then some of them succeeded, with George Lynch and his Dokken and Lynch Mob, and Vito Bratta and his White Lion.

Then... came MTV with its first music video, which then became the connecting dots between the rock music and visually friendly.

I said moved away, but that horrific image remains with the Metal music.

Want to be sure? Please check Slayer's Repentless trilogy playlist below and tell me what you think in the comment below! But I have to warn you, it's very gore!

GryphinGore, back to the grave!