The Change In The Audience At Metal Shows

[Crimson Glory]

Lol, I actually agree with Crimson Glory (great band btw), but he seems to have lost his composure here.

I'm not sure if I'd say metal is the best it's ever been these days, but there certainly is a lot more variety than there was in the past. It's also very easily accessible with youtube and other streaming services.

If you're into the more classic metal stuff, a lot of the bands of old are still making new albums on a regular basis. If you're more into death metal with crazy technical instruments, there's that too. If you want something a bit more atmospheric with clean vocals, there's plenty of bands that got you covered. Want some power metal with songs about fighting dragons on horseback? It's there.

No matter what your taste is in the genre, there's so much out there that you should be able to find a band you like. It might take a little digging, but it's out there.

Generally I don't let that shit get too me, but something about classifying all Metalheads as "Fat" and "DnD players" and whatever other bullshit that loser said managed too.

It's a diverse fan base. Lots of people like Metal, all different kinds, there is no classifying the fan base.

It was just an ignorant comment. Typical of this shit heap of a website. The guy who posted that is describing himself no doubt.

Crimson Glory is pretty good, yes. Their first album is classic.

 

[Blackjack]

I mean, the guy he was arguing about did call everyone who goes to metal shows fat neck-beards. That's just insulting people, it's not really an opinion on music.

On the subject at hand, the recollections of the OP are about very mainstream bands: Van Halen is enormously so, Judas Priest a little less so, and if you're counting the hair metal bands of the 1980's, they were very mainstream as well. I don't think going to a Van Halen concert puts you in the metal scene persay (I'm not trying to be insulting, nor am I saying you're not a real metal fan, I'm just pointing out that Van Halen's S/T album sold ten million copies. I doubt everyone who ever bought it, or everyone who ever went to one of their shows considered themselves a metal fan.)

The music industry has changed a ton since then. There's no way that a metal song would ever break the top forty on today's charts. Heck, there's barely any regular rock songs on there. Metal and hard rock had a separation (see nu metal), and metal constitutes the more extreme end.

I'll be honest, most people don't like modern metal. The vocals turn them away. The only band I can even think of that I might recommend to an average listener is Baroness, but it still wouldn't sound much like the late 70's early 80's bands (Power metal has clean vocals, but I'm not big on it and don't know enough about it to really make such a recommendation). If you're the type of person who wouldn't mind easing themselves into a new type of music, you might like it. If you want a song to catch you after one listen, there's not much hope.

The thing about Van Halen is that while you're right that they had a good number of fans who didn't listen to anything heavier than Van Halen or Rush, they did also have a pretty fair number of fans who liked stuff like Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, and AC/DC. Also, of HUGE importance is that in the late 70s and early 80s, Eddie Van Halen was the biggest influence on heavy metal guitarists there was, period. The only guy who came close in the early 80s as far as being influential to heavy metal guitarists was, of course, Randy Rhoads.

I think you're absolutely right about the vocals of modern metal being what turns most would-be fans (people who like heavy guitar, bass and drums but want less abrasive, more melodic vocals) away. I also think the number of labels for different styles of metal and then sub-categories of those categories to be extremely divisive. It used to be that if you liked heavy metal and you met somebody who liked have metal, chances were that you liked at least a fair number of the same bands. Priest fans generally liked Iron Maiden and vice versa, for example. And if you liked those bands it was likely that you listened to Black Sabbath with Ozzy on vocals, Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio on vocals, or both! If you liked Sabbath with Dio you probably liked the band Dio, and there was at least a fair chance you liked Rainbow. If you liked them there was a good chance you liked The Scorpions, and right there I've listened to the most of the biggest heavy metal bands of the 70s and 80s, not counting pop metal or glam metal.

As for glam or pop metal, there was a big difference between some of the bands. Some of the harder of these bands like early Motley Crue, Dokken (because of George Lynch's guitar playing), and Whitesnake (with a voice kind of like Robert Plant's voice and a heavy blues influence to their earlier music especially), and Skid Row with an amazing vocalist in Sebastian bach and some fairly heavy guitar for a quasi0glam band, were way different from bans like Warrant, Winger, Poison and Bon Jovi and it would be unfair to say Skid Row is no more metal than Poison, for example.

I say the multitudes of categories of today's metal are divisive because even if you do meet somebody into metal, odds are you still don't like many or any of the same bands! Bands the 70s and 80s had a lot of variety but we didn't find it necessary come up with more labels than heavy metal, pop or glam metal, and thrash/death/black metal.

 

[ArchGoat]

Other than cookie monster vocals and some obscure Norwegian black death metal band, who would you say are some of the best modern metal bands? I mean bands that are akin to the 70's and 80's era of metal, like Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth, etc.

Why exclude the extreme metal genre? By doing that you're excluding a shit ton of good bands That seems awfully ignorant if it's not your thing that's fine but to write it completely off? Why does metal have to be all about the Metallica, Megadeth type of bands ..and not all Black metal comes from Norway infact the majority of Black Metal bands I listen to are from places other than Norway I could give tons of examples maybe a handful are from Norway the genre itself is much larger than that and I thought I did a Good job of making it aware but I guess not.

 

[ShinkanPo]

There was a time when I would have said that if you like heavy metal you're probably an extrovert. If you play in a heavy metal band and you're not an extrovert, I don't know how you got there. Does it seem the audience has changed to mostly introverts since the classic metal of the 70's and 80s? There used to be plenty of women at the shows, plenty of guys with their girlfriends, but now it seems to be an almost all male crowd of introverts who apparently have no girlfriends.

There aren't many genres of music that women usually seem to hate. Almost every type of music draws a crowd that is a fairly even mix of guys and girls. That's how a band draws a good sized crowd - there are going to be a decent number of guys there so girls want to go. Then the more girls that go to the show, the more guys want to go, etc. This works in practically everything but not in metal these days. So what is keeping the girls away, is it the change in the music or a change in the type of guys who listen to the music - guys that girls don't want to be around?

Metal is still not that popular compared to the Spice girls,britney spears,Beyonce,Tailor Swift type groups that women now wants to listen too so it can't attract more "normal" people but has become mainstreme enough that "trendy nerdy" introverts are now into it. And Metal Music is sort of Dark and depressive, and Metal Music is from the 80s many introverts today including want to rebel against todays society so they gravitate to Metal.

Its not that there are less extrovert people in Metal concerts the amount introverts just got much much bigger.

When I was in High School, my group are the metal heads and we are the introverts while the Jocks half of them are love song country pop dudes because women dig that shit.





So no women in Metal clubs now a days but it won't be for long we have Youtube now and Metal is having some sort of renaisance more extrovert people will be attracted to it.


Great thread by the way.

 

[shinobimusashi]

I went to about a dozen or so metal shows from 2000 to 2004, most women I've ever seen at a metal show was Metallica/Korn/Kid Rock at Texas Stadium in 2000, seen so many bare tits at that show it was insane, every 5 minutes in between bands girls were flashing the crowd. Never seen anything like it at any other metal show I went to. Closest thing was probably the Pantera/Slayer show I seen in Dallas in 2001 there was this one hot babe that just stripped down totally nude and was just walking around for about an hour before security took her out.

Then there was the Type O Negative show I went to in 2003 in a small nightclub in Houston, place probably had a max capacity of 800 and there was probably close to 1,500 packed in there, it was packed so full you literally could not move, over half of them were ladies. I had my girl with me that night. TON had problems with their equipment and took a small break in the middle of their set. I took my girl to the bathroom and she came out of there so freaked out she was ready to leave, she was a country girl that just went to the show with me, she wasn't really into heavy music. The look on her face when she came out of that bathroom was so hilarious to me looking back, she was so creeped out. God knows what was going on in that bathroom, people shooting up drugs, lesbian sex, S&M bondage, who knows what else. You could probably make a sweet "Heavy Metal Parking Lot" style documentary about what went on in a ladies bathroom at a Type O Negative show. I knew so many chicks that were so into that band back in the day.

Most of the other concerts I went to there weren't really a lot of women. Heavy metal music is pretty much the opposite of everything that attracts women to music.