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Video: How Satanic Rumble Got Mainstream, or Why Heavy Metal is Good for Health
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
How did heavy metal come about? Why for a long time it was considered not music, but a roar? Today this style is considered by people of different ages and social strata. The underground subculture has become a mass phenomenon. Liberalism, gender neutrality and even psychotherapy - these are the controversial milestones in the history of heavy metal, the music of freedom.
The secret of the success of the Heavy Metal style, which today is considered the standard of conservatism, is that it does not impose an ideology and is constantly changing. It’s hard to believe, probably, but this was not always the case. In the 70s, metalists brought primitive horror to ordinary people. Long hair, leather jackets with rivets and a wild rumble by all accounts, which was instantly dubbed hellish noise.
Heavy metal now attracts the widest audience, which consists of the most diverse audience and includes hipsters, bank employees, and classical music fans.
If it were not for the quarantine due to COVID-19, style fans would now enjoy their favorite music at the world famous Wacken Open Air festival in Germany. It usually goes to a full house.
Heavy - music for everyone
Until the early nineties, the media around the world demonized metal. What musicians were not accused of! Glorification of prohibited substances and violence, even in devil worship! I will not say that this upset the metalists. The bad guy image even gave them some pleasure.
Metal has its roots in the blues, just like rock. Its true pioneers are monsters such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. They were the first to leave the psychedelics of the seventies and began to play heavy speed riffs. It was this sound that gave birth to heavy metal.
The main admirers of the new style were representatives of the working class. A little later, the “good kids” discovered this loud, harsh music for themselves, which horrified their conservative parents. Surely, when Ritchie Blackmore smashed his guitar to pieces at a concert, what could good citizens think? But heavy music has an extremely high tolerance and is able to captivate the hearts of many, very different people.
Carsten Schumacher, a music journalist and metal fanatic since the early eighties, says: “You can be a laborer or a professor's son, it doesn't matter. It is important that you share a common passion, delimit yourself as necessary from the mainstream and understand what others think is ridiculous."
Protest music
Heavy metal has become a religion for those who hate frames and do not want to be a gray mass, who are annoyed by the mainstream and its representatives. The metal environment united everyone. It was comfortable here for people without any special preferences and role-playing, geeks and poor students.
The development of the style did not stand still. It has undergone a lot of transformations and divided into many sub-styles: power metal, speed metal, thrash metal, folk metal and many, many others. Heavy metal's complex history is a mirror of a bygone century. A multi-faceted age of all kinds of extremes. The genre's enduring success stems from a balance of unbreakable consistency and endless experimentation. Metal has never been a rigid ideology. The basis of this music, its light and power is freedom.
Representatives of this musical direction, rather even a culture, kept going forward, mastering a new sound and introducing it into the genre. Metal is the music of experimentation. There is a place for jazz solo and medieval lyre. Not even comme il faut, synthesizers have found their place in heavy over time.
Jörg Scheller, art critic and journalist, has vividly and thoroughly described in his book Metamorphoses. An incredible change in heavy metal”(Metalmorphosen. Die unwahrscheinlichen Wandlungen des Heavy Metal) how the underground rebellious subculture became a mass phenomenon. Sheller did a detailed study of this topic and was extremely surprised by the use of heavy metal by various companies for advertising. The journalist believes that today this genre is perceived by people as a funny masquerade and a beautifully flourishing business.
The music expert believes that in a liberal society, any subculture and informal youth movement eventually become part of the mainstream. In a society like ours, this is inevitable, for there is nothing that cannot be made the norm. In fundamental theocracies this is, of course, unlikely. For example, if you take a country like Iran, it is still a deep underground there.
Karsten Schumacher says that nowadays metal is the standard of quality. Musicians and fans of this style are considered to be very level-headed people. Roughly speaking, the heavier the music, the calmer the environment. “Regular emissions of internal aggression in a creative context is a kind of mental hygiene. Not least because of this, there are practically no fights at metal festivals,”the journalist adds.
The main principle is freedom
Metal was once the dark heart of hard rock. Now, is it an element of masculinity and an easily digestible genre? Art critic Jörg Scheller has repeatedly said about this: "The essence of metal, its core is freedom." Today, nothing has changed in this regard. Music changes the world. Only it doesn’t happen so fast. It penetrates the minds and hearts, gradually changing them. Everyone has the opportunity to express themselves, their essence and inner world. Previously, it was impossible to imagine rock or metal with female vocals. Now this genre allows women to shape new images for society. Once upon a time, Elvis Presley formed a new male image in society. Nowadays, this no longer surprises anyone.
Musicologist Carsten Schumacher talks about how this music frees souls: “I am constantly looking for new bands that are popping up everywhere. Metal is played all over the world. When I have to listen to bands from Tanzania, Iran or Indonesia, I hear how they are liberated through this music, I feel connected with these people."
Metal compares favorably with the endless majority of other musical genres in that it can be both pretentious and ironic, serious and playful, virtuoso and simple. The most important thing in this genre is that it does not reject various social injustices, the cruelty of this world, evil, and wars. He passes it through himself, miraculously transforming it into real images. Lyrics, music open up the deepest and heaviest abscesses of our society, releasing pus and cleansing. Music becomes the healer of human souls.
Trash tools, a homeless cripple and the finest music … Read our article on how a blind homeless man in a Viking costume became one of the most influential composers of the 20th century.
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