Metal Fans Use Their Heads For Banging, Thinking

Brian Raftery | March 21, 2007 4:44 am
jennametak.jpg

Hot on the heels of an incredibly dubious-sounding study that found that smart kids like metal, today’s Guardian music blog examines the perception that head-bangers are stupid:

In my day job as features writer for Kerrang! magazine I’ve interviewed plenty of metal musicians, and plenty of them have been so stupid that two IQ points less would mean they’d need milking each morning. But plenty more have been just the opposite. What is more striking, though, is the assumption from outside that anyone associated with the genre is brick thick. It doesn’t matter that in recent years Atlanta band Mastodon have released an album based on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick or that Californian band Thrice have written music inspired by the Thomas Pynchon novel V. What matters is that people who like the Smiths are understood to be smart while people who listen to Slayer are reckoned to be otherwise. Case shut.

We beg to differ: If there’s one thing we’ve learned from writing hackily repetitive magazine profiles over the past few years, it’s that all musicians–regardless of genre–couldn’t tie their left shoe with their right hand. That beloved rapper-actor-icon? Taking it to the next level of stupid. Those button-pushing top-ten starlets? Dimmer than you could possibly imagine. Those ’80s revivalists? Let’s just say that if their bus turned over in the middle of the night, few members would have to worry about being killed by falling books. There are a few exceptions, of course, but the rule of thumb is: If it walks, talks, and carries a guitar, it’s probably just about as smart as an extension cord.

Why metal fans are brainier [Guardian]

Tags: