Human nature, as a point of instinctive energy, without any reasonable thought or consciousness…
Is to create a family or a social group with common characteristics.
On one hand, it is likely, someone simply tries to impose himself on other members, always by using as a pretense some imaginary or dead person in order to create some new dogma.
Possibly just trying to magnify his “ego” through the union.
Maybe, he also uses the other members like stones to build fantastic walls, and of course Rock/Metal didn’t get away with it!
Music in itself can become common ground, in order to create a “family” in a broader sense of the term.
Especially metal as a whole, but also separately (by its genres), has quite a concentrated power.
The reasons are obvious and many!
Marginalization
Its continued marginalization by other majority groups, whether religious or political, especially in the 1980s.
But neither the raised malocchio, nor the rhythmic shake of the heads gives enough reasons to prove that one belongs to the metal family.
Every group, marginalized of course, but large, needs some initiation or mystagogy or at least some indication that one belongs to it.
In metal music, this proof is the … knowledge; but specialized knowledge, on metal bands and their discography.
T-shirts
A T-shirts, along with a natural presence in concerts, is an extra for this acceptance.
Although it certainly did not exist to a great extent and now almost is eliminated, it has never been easy for fans of metal to accept a new member.
But why this whole process? It’s nothing but music.
Maybe with a lot of special features, but again it’s just music!
The answers are certainly not going to be given in this article, nor is it intended to answer anything.
It is meant to see different perspectives of things in metal.
And while music stages are being filled, how is it possible that bars that play metal rely on a certain number of customers?
Why many bands that are on the charts, are unknown to the majority?
Maybe it is not music, not even a supposed subculture that follows it, it is just human nature itself, with all of its deflections.
Humans always believe in fallacies superstitions and prejudices.
Metal as a crutch
Metal has been for many of us a crutch to be able to withstand our teenage reality or matrix, depending on how everyone perceives it.
Surely the lyrics of many songs were for us a lifeline from rejection and prejudice of the world.
Through these verses, we heard a voice reminding us that we are not alone and someone else has the same experiences as us.
It was a window, for a different world, a little more like a fairytale.
The hard sounds were not just a painkiller, but a way out of our accumulated anger.
For our own safety, but also those around us.
Of course, not all cases are the same, but almost all have a lot in common.
Through the songs, we learned things. From history to philosophy, even occultism; demonizing it at the same time.
Gradually the world began to become more understandable, as did the mechanisms that move reality or matrix.
Our music quests became deeper and our musical knowledge, prestige.
We stumbled in a nutshell, … but it was not exactly like that.
We slowly became what we used to hate in the first place.
“In general, we reject or underestimate the beliefs of people who do not belong to our group, especially when their beliefs are noticeably different from ours.” Manos Danezis writes very aptly in his article “Prejudices that distort reality “.
We started to reject other people who did not have our own knowledge of our favorite music, nor did they have the chance to see enough live shows.
We lost from what exactly used to fight with while maintaining the matrix system which hurt us in our teenage years.
On the other hand, we stopped searching for more and enjoying a knowledge already acquired, rejecting anything new.
We use our own knowledge in order to test anyone who’s speaking to us about music; without even considering that our own knowledge is the only outcome of our personal experience.
Evidently ignoring each of our interlocutors on music issues.
Stockholm Syndrome
We got Stockholm Syndrome.
Knowledge and music itself are like money, they only have value if they “turn”, that i.e. when they are shared.
But whoever acquires it, at any insignificant occasion, only tries to accumulate it, only for himself, ignoring anyone who is not at his “own level” but also not fitting to personal preferences.
As a result, the circle shrinks becomes tougher and in the end becomes a uniform mass, as defined by José Ortega y Gasset in his monumental book: “The Rebellion of the Masses.”
To speak more allegorically, Metal, instead of a sword that breaks every wall, becomes a heavy metal armor.
An armor that is constantly shrinking, making the wearer initially cumbersome and finally, it is drowning him.
Rock & Metal
Rock/metal manages with her appearance to become more extroverted and expressive.
To break rules and deal with the human being as a free entity.
To reveal the fears of each creator, and to give its followers a means of expression of their own psyche.
The social formation that starts from our childhood will always follow us until we eventually leave this world.
A lion, persecuted by a herd, does not fight to destroy the remaining herds but tries to make a new one. That’s his instinct.
The same happens with humans.
And few have the power to seize teenage doubt and turn it into the freedom of thought.
So the problem is what we carry from our mental and mind cradle, feeling safe in given and familiar situations, even if we are constantly being struck by them.
Rock/metal offers opportunities to escape from biased attitudes.
And certainly, beyond her own musical power, that’s why we chose rock/metal to accompany us in life.
Obviously, we can’t get rid of our early social and family influences
But we can take advantage of the perspective that this music gives us not to perpetuate the thoughts that imprison our own spirit.
The preservation and perpetuation of the biased character can be done in a way that another fan of metal music will be able to learn the special elements of this music only for the benefit of his own spiritual enlargement.
The rock/metal family can and should grow.
But a family is not a closed circle of people with some secret code of communication and behavior.
It is an open circle in the shape of open arms and with trials of peculiarities and uniqueness.
So, a new look is just to teach and share our knowledge.
After all, almost every kid who starts his musical journey with the same sounds, with which we started.